The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “I know I’m right.” And now I saw Ricky not with the eye of friendship but with the eye of a writer bent on detached analysis, the eye that was learning how to strip a man’s character to the bone in an attempt to pry into the mystery of his personality.

  “Well, if you really are right,” said Anna, who despite her love of romance had a practical streak which often reminded me of my mother, “I think we ought to stop worrying about Ricky and start worrying about Erika.”

  I knew she was right but this only deepened my dilemma.

  “I can’t betray him,” I said, “and neither can you, because I’ve told you in confidence. I concede Erika ought to know but it’s up to her to find out.”

  “But darling, how could she? In fact do you think she’s even heard of homosexuality? The truth is that unless one moves in Bohemian circles it’s just not talked about, is it?”

  “True, but it would be impossible to be a friend of Ricky’s for long without hearing all about Oscar Wilde.”

  We decided to drop a hint, and the next time we saw Erika on her own (she was engaged by that time—Ricky had taken advantage of the star-spangled night), Anna said brightly after I had initiated a discussion of The Importance of Being Earnest, “I expect poor Mr. Wilde was very unhappily married as he was a homosexual!”

  “Heavens, yes!” I agreed fervently. “It must have been such a tricky situation for his wife!” And we both turned to gaze at Cousin Erika for a reaction.

  There was none. Round-faced and placid, a blond plait coiled neatly over each ear, she merely waited politely for the conversation to continue.

  “We can’t hint harder than that without betraying Ricky,” I said afterwards to Anna, “and frankly I think she’s lucky to get him. I wouldn’t have her.”

  “Poor Erika!” said Anna. “If only she wasn’t so—”

  “Lugubrious.”

  “Exactly!” It was rare for Anna to be at a loss for a word. Unlike Erika, who pronounced her words faultlessly yet always managed to sound stilted, Anna had a heavy accent but a perfect command of colloquial English.

  “I don’t see what more we can do,” I said, and added to ease my conscience: “Maybe it’ll be all right. After all, if Ricky sincerely wants to be a heterosexual, oughtn’t we to do all we can to encourage him?”

  “But is one’s sexuality simply an attitude of mind?”

  I didn’t know, and it occurred to me then that sex was a far more complicated subject than most people thought.

  “Anna, be honest—do you object to my friendship with Ricky?”

  “No, I like him. He’s fun. I’d only object if I thought you loved him better than you loved me, but you don’t, do you?”

  “No, that would be a mental, physical and emotional impossibility.”

  “Then I can’t see that either of us has anything to worry about. There may be trouble between Ricky and Erika, but when all’s said and done it can’t affect our happiness.”

  She was wrong. The trouble began after the wedding when Ricky asked if he and Erika could live at Oxmoon.

  7

  I

  I KNEW AT ONCE I HAD TO take a tough line, the kind of tough line I had taken with Uncle John over my elopement. Ricky, like most people, had never seen me at my toughest. I shocked him to the core.

  “So that’s why you married into the Godwin family,” I said. “You saw I’d never invite you to live here while you were a factotum with a home of your own, but you thought I wouldn’t turn you down if you were my cousin’s husband and conveniently found yourself homeless.”

  Ricky turned a deep painful red. “That’s a bloody thing to say!”

  “Well, what am I to think? You come here and trot out this story about your mother not getting on with Erika and how you can’t evict your mother because she has a life interest in the house under your father’s will, but all this must have been obvious to you before your wedding—you’re no fool. Now, look here, Ricky. You’re my best friend. You’re being invaluable to me as my factotum and I’m deeply grateful to you, but I can’t have you living here. It wouldn’t suit. Sorry.”

  “But Kes—” He was frantic, his poise shattered, his mask of sophistication falling apart before my eyes, but I did not dare feel sorry for him; the situation was too dangerous. “—why wouldn’t it suit? Why? All four of us get on so well!”

  “Two’s company and three or four is quite definitely a crowd. Ricky, our friendship means a great deal to me and I don’t in the least want to see it go down the drain, but down the drain it’ll go in double-quick time if you can’t accept my decision. I won’t have you at Oxmoon and that’s that.” I then terminated the conversation by adding: “I draw the line.” Not for nothing had I endured years of being brought up by Uncle John.

  Ricky covered his face with his hands, and suddenly he was so pathetic in his futile unreciprocated love that I could no longer check my feelings. I felt desperately sorry for him, and beyond the pity lay guilt that I should be the cause of so much genuine misery.

  “But what am I to do?” he whispered in despair. “I’m in an awful hole, Kes. I couldn’t possibly raise the money to buy Erika the sort of home she ought to have. I’m in debt as it is, and now that my mother’s being so difficult I can’t ask her for money. You see, I’ve been so absolutely relying on our friendship—”

  “Of course. Why not? Just because you can’t live at Oxmoon you needn’t think you can’t rely on me to give you whatever financial help you need,” I said compassionately, seizing the chance to alleviate my guilt, and that was how I came to take yet another fatal step along the road to my great disaster.

  II

  What was my most fatal step? Sacking Thomas? Sacking Fairfax? Engaging Ricky? Engaging Adam? No, this lethal reshuffling of personnel merely set the stage so that I could embark on my great dream; my most fatal step was beginning the long-awaited glorification of Oxmoon.

  Yet this need not have been such a catastrophe. My mother and Uncle John, bent on restoring the family fortune at a time when the postwar economic climate was beggaring so many members of the Anglo-Welsh gentry, had brought me up to be very conscious of the evils of extravagance, and I did realize I had no business behaving as if I were the Duke of Westminster with the title deeds of half London in my pocket. So what drove me over the cliff into the abyss?

  Looking back I can see a number of sinister facts lurking around my situation like a bunch of death’s heads at the feast. I was very young; in the September of 1938 when I severed my leading strings I was still two months short of my nineteenth birthday. Also for ten years I had been guarded by my twin watchdogs, my mother and Uncle John, and now suddenly they were both gone with the result that I was exposed not only to obvious temptations like extravagance but to subtle psychological pressures which at the time I hadn’t the experience to understand.

  The truth was that my mother, while tolerating my eccentricities in her own splendidly unorthodox fashion, had always made it clear to me that I should model myself on Uncle John, and Uncle John had always made it clear to me that if one could not be the perfect Godwin, keeping a stiff upper lip, doing the done thing and drawing noble lines left, right and center, one was inevitably doomed to some unspeakable fate. “Terrible things happen,” thundered Uncle John, chilling my childish blood, “when people fail to stick to the rules.”

  Quite so. But the result of this puritanical Victorian tub-thumping was that I wound up terrified of falling short of Uncle John’s heroic standards and therefore being automatically damned for all eternity by my failure not just to stick to the rules but to live up to them. While my mother had been alive she had boosted my confidence by behaving as if she thought I was guaranteed of a successful life, but with my mother gone I found that my self-confidence, never strong, was now shaky in the extreme. Consequently, I tended to embrace any course of action that boosted my confidence and gave me the impression I was being a huge success.

  Oxmoon boosted my confidence. An
na boosted my confidence. And on my honeymoon I had discovered that spending money boosted my confidence. So whenever I felt a little inadequate, whenever a situation seemed rather more than I could master, I instinctively turned either to Oxmoon or to Anna or to my bank account in order to make myself feel more secure.

  Ricky made me feel inadequate. After my showdown with him in the January of 1939 he represented to me not only an insoluble problem but a problem I was secretly terrified I couldn’t control. A normal friendship is hard to sustain when the normality is all on one side, and although Ricky’s behavior was immaculate I was aware increasingly of tensions, of uneasy crosscurrents of emotion, and Anna was aware of them too. I began to wonder where we were all going to end but I found I was too nervous to visualize the answer; perhaps what I feared was some catastrophic outburst from Ricky which would end our friendship, wreck his marriage and taint my relationship with Anna. The obvious solution, as I told Anna more than once, was to get rid of him before any catastrophe occurred, but I just couldn’t do it. I felt so responsible for him. I felt so guilty. I felt I had to do all I could to make amends for my sexual indifference which I sensed was still hurting him so deeply.

  “Kester, you’re being very silly,” said Anna severely. “Here you are, paying Ricky a salary, providing him with interesting work, even paying the mortgage on his new house—and he still sees you every day! Why should you feel guilty about him? I think he’s very lucky and I don’t feel sorry for him at all!”

  This made me realize that the situation with Ricky was quite beyond me, and terrified that she might think me weak I said rapidly, “I know, I’m being idiotic. Let’s run up to London for the weekend and stay at the Savoy and have lashings of caviar and champagne!”

  We did, and once I’d started spending money I felt so much better that I was reluctant to stop. We descended like locusts on Christie’s and Sotheby’s, and as I bid for a pair of ravishing Chinese jade horses which I knew had been destined by God for the hall at Oxmoon I suddenly realized that the hour had come for the Great Glorification which I had been promising myself since childhood.

  I might fall far short of being a perfect Godwin but at least I could make Oxmoon the most perfect house in Wales.

  “I want only the best for Oxmoon,” I said to my new friend Toby James. “Nothing but the best.”

  “Dear boy,” said Toby, quickly deciding I was a young man of unparalleled good sense, “you shall have it.”

  I heard of Toby through Aunt Julie, who had met him at some party in Chelsea. He was a well-known interior decorator, and I knew as soon as he saw Oxmoon that I wanted to employ him.

  “But it’s a marvelous place!” he exclaimed as he stood in the hall and gazed with his sharp clever eyes at the sweep of the staircase. “A little gem of civilization in an enchanting rustic backwater! Imagine how stunning it must have been in the eighteenth century—imagine battling out from Swansea through miles of mud and hordes of astounded sheep and then suddenly—Beauty! Refinement! Luxury! Grace! Dear boy, it must have seemed like a vision of heaven!”

  “Exactly!” I said excited. “And I want to recapture that vision of heaven—I want to make it live again!”

  “How deliciously heroic!” said Toby. “What a splendid young man you are!”

  Those were exactly the words I wanted to hear. I engaged him. The components of the disaster were now all slipping smoothly into place, and at my side as always stood Ricky, the catalyst, unconsciously luring me on to prove my manhood with each lavish check I rushed to sign.

  III

  By this time it was the February of 1939 and Ricky and Erika had been married for two months. They hadn’t been the only couple in the neighborhood to walk down the aisle before Christmas. A month before their wedding, all four of us had been electrified by the news that Cousin Harry was engaged to Belinda Stourham and was proposing to stampede with her to the altar as soon as the banns had been called.

  “That’s quite impossible,” was my immediate reaction.

  Cousin Harry had been flourishing at Penhale Manor since September, although we had not met since the severance of my leading strings. I had heard Thomas had been helping him with the estate and presently word had reached me that in the opinion of the local rustics Harry was hardworking, enthusiastic and “a born farmer just like his grandfather.” Bad news travels fast.

  I had also heard he had been seeing Belinda since his return to Gower, but I had thought it necessary merely to raise a quizzical eyebrow and remark, “Some men are easily pleased.” Nasty little Belinda Stourham, who had just turned eighteen, was Gestapo Thomas’s sister-in-law, and now that old Oswald was dead I had no doubt that Thomas and Eleanor were anxious to marry her off so that they could have Stourham Hall to themselves. (The maiden aunt, Miss Angela Stourham, had also recently died, probably from exhaustion resulting from years of looking after her invalid brother and bringing up his ghastly offspring.) The bulk of the land attached to Stourham Hall had been sold off years ago to the Llewellyns, but Thomas and Eleanor had decided to expand their pig farm there when I fired Thomas from Oxmoon.

  “Why is Harry’s engagement so incomprehensible to you?” demanded Ricky amused when the news reached us. “There’s usually only one reason for a hasty trip to the altar!”

  “Certainly,” agreed Erika, stilted as ever despite her animation at the prospect of a family scandal. “It is beyond doubt that she is pregnant.”

  “Imagine Harry not doing the done thing!” Anna was as amazed as I was.

  “Well, that’s just it,” I said. “It’s not possible. I can’t imagine why they’re getting married but I do know Belinda can’t possibly be pregnant.”

  Ricky laughed. “Surely even Harry must be subject to accidents occasionally!”

  “No, you miss the point. There couldn’t have been an accident because he would never have slept with her. Harry wouldn’t seduce anyone who could be ranked as a ‘nice girl.’ That wouldn’t be playing the game.”

  “Bet you five pounds he becomes a father in seven months’ time!” said Ricky, still not taking me seriously, and was astonished when I said, “Done.”

  “But Kester,” said Anna, “if she’s not pregnant, why’s Harry marrying like this when he’s only nineteen? Surely Uncle John can’t possibly approve!”

  But I was ready for this. My fertile imagination had by this time had several seconds to visualize a plausible explanation.

  “Belinda must have come into money when old Oswald died,” I said. “I know her mother was a platinum-blond tart, but Belinda’s a Stourham and her father was one of my grandfather’s best friends. So socially and financially this marriage would make sense to Uncle John—he might have hoped Harry would do better for himself, but he’s not going to object if Harry’s dead keen—as he obviously must be. Of course Uncle John would inevitably think nineteen’s too young, but Harry will be twenty soon and he’s no doubt seduced battalions of married women so at least Uncle John doesn’t have to worry that he’s inexperienced, and he probably feels Harry’s worldly enough to reach a wise decision. In fact now that I really think about it I can see it’s rather a brilliant match,” I said, realizing with horror that Harry had outshone me as usual. I knew Uncle John would consider a Stourham of Llangennith a far better matrimonial prospect than a Steinberg of Berlin.

  “But Kes,” objected Ricky, “how could any man be madly in love with a girl who looks like Donald Duck?”

  “I don’t think she looks like Donald Duck,” I said. “I think she looks like Mae West playing Snow White.” Although I had always thought Belinda plain I suspected that Harry would never have looked twice at any woman who couldn’t be ranked as a sex goddess, so I was obliged to make a hasty revision of my past judgment.

  The wedding at Llangennith was not large but all the family were there so I felt there was a cast of thousands. At the reception Uncle John very kindly came up to me and inquired how I was getting on. I told him everything was absolutely wo
nderful, and smiled radiantly. Uncle John said nothing could please him more. After that I realized I had drunk too much champagne and retired to the cloakroom to be sick. We left early.

  A week later, just as I was congratulating myself that I had fully recovered from this ordeal, Harry and Belinda returned from their brief honeymoon in the Wye Valley and sent us a Christmas card.

  “Oh God,” I said. “We’ll have to send them one.”

  “Should we invite them over for a Christmas drink?”

  “Yes. But we’re not going to.”

  The telephone rang. It was Cousin Harry, very charmingly inviting us to have a Christmas drink at Penhale Manor. I might have known he would outshine me as usual by doing the done thing no matter how adverse the circumstances.

  “Thanks, Harry,” I said, wishing Christmas could be abolished. “We’d love to come.”

  We arrived at six thirty and stayed exactly one hour in the drawing room, which was shabby and untidy but otherwise much as it had been when Bronwen had lived at the Manor with Uncle John. The main addition to the room was an expensive radiogram which I immediately coveted. Harry was a wireless addict and apparently unable to face life without continual concerts on the airwaves.

  Despite the hour neither of them had bothered to change into evening clothes. Harry, wearing baggy gray trousers, a crisp white shirt and an old tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows, looked very much the country squire who was pretending to be short of money, while Belinda, wearing a skirt which looked as if it had been made out of a tablecloth and a somewhat shrunken pullover which emphasized her Mae West bosom, looked like nothing on earth. Anna and I, discreetly clad in the products of Harrods and Savile Row, could only feel grossly overdressed. We all eyed each other very watchfully indeed.