The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  IV

  “What I can’t understand,” mused my father as we lit cigarettes, “is why you and Kester both seem to regard Thomas as a modern Frankenstein. It’s extraordinary. I realize, of course, that Thomas can be difficult and that his bombastic manners aren’t to everyone’s taste, but if you look beyond his idiosyncrasies you must surely see he’s a thoroughly good chap.”

  “I concede he’s good at his job.”

  “It’s not just that. He’s honest, trustworthy, loyal—and he leads, when all’s said and done, a very decent sort of life. Oh, I know he drinks a bit but he has it in control and God knows I don’t expect everyone to be perfect. He’s happily married—Eleanor thinks the world of him—and he’s really the most devoted father to little Bobby—”

  “He’s always on his best behavior for you, Father.” My God, aren’t we all.

  “Well, I daresay, but if he shows me his good side at least that proves there’s a good side to show. I can’t understand the problem here. Dislike—yes. I could understand it if you and Kester merely disliked Thomas and found him boorish. But this rabid irrational hatred—”

  “I don’t hate Thomas, Father. He’s just someone I’d be happy never to see again.”

  My father, who had never quite lost his sense of humor despite the years with Constance, gave an exasperated laugh and moved away down the room in search of an ashtray. I waited for him to sit down but he didn’t. He seemed restless, troubled. God knows he had plenty to be troubled about but instinct, finely honed by my past experience, whispered that he was at present disturbed not by Kester but by me.

  “What was it you wanted to talk to me about, Father?” I said, nervous enough to take the bull by the horns. As always when I scented a confrontation with him, the dread was sinking like lead to the pit of my stomach.

  My father took his time in replying but at last he looked me straight in the eyes and said flatly, “I’m disturbed by your apparent dislike of the idea that Thomas should be given a free rein at Oxmoon. I hope you’re not implying that you should be appointed in his place.”

  “Me! Me? My dear Father—”

  “No, don’t bother to remind me you haven’t the experience to run Oxmoon. A young man with your brains and ambition would find it all too easy to learn.”

  “I … Father, I think I must be imagining this conversation. Do you seriously think I’m dreaming of some fantastic coup d’etat?”

  “God knows what you’re dreaming of, Harry, but let me make it clear once and for all that I don’t want you involving yourself in Oxmoon’s affairs. I’m grateful to you for helping out today, but I don’t want this to set any kind of precedent.”

  “But Father, I assure you I have absolutely no intention of—”

  “Just get this into your head, Harry: Kester will never, never give this place up. And if you continue to regard Penhale Manor as a stepping-stone to Oxmoon you’ll be making a very big mistake.”

  “I regard the Manor as my home,” I said. “My home!” Steady on, Harry. Voice level. Upper lip ramrod-straight. Kester’s the only one in this family who’s allowed to shout in a shaking voice. “I’m sorry, Father, but you’ve got completely the wrong end of the stick here—”

  “I’ve come to the conclusion I’d be happier if you left Gower now, Harry, instead of waiting for the expiration of your lease on the Manor. You’ve had your basic training in estate management and now I’d like to put you in charge of your mother’s lands in Herefordshire—it would be best not only for you but for Kester. You give that boy what Constance would be pleased to call an inferiority complex. How do you think he’ll feel now if you continue to flourish—as you inevitably will—on his doorstep? Can’t you see it’ll only add to his current humiliation?”

  “But damn it, Father, why should I be dispossessed just because bloody Kester can’t stand the sight of me flourishing at his gates? It’s bloody well not fair!”

  “I assure you I have only your welfare in mind—”

  “All right, turn me out, go on, turn me out, I know damn well I’m only living there on your charity! Just you go ahead and deprive me of my home all over again and wreck my happiness a second time!”

  There was a deep painful silence. I was appalled, and not only by what I’d said; I was stricken by the expression on his face. We stood there in that beautiful room but for a moment it was as if we were both standing in hell.

  “Father—oh God, forgive me, I didn’t mean it—”

  “Harry, if you only knew what I’ve gone through in order to ensure your happiness—”

  “I do know, I do—oh, Christ—”

  “Believe me, all I want is for you to be happy—”

  “Then let me stay at the Manor. Please, Father, please let me stay.”

  “But I’m just so afraid that it’ll lead to a disastrous situation—”

  “All I want is to live there peacefully without causing trouble. I’ve no sinister motive, I swear I haven’t. Let Kester keep bloody Oxmoon. I don’t care.”

  There was another silence. My father stubbed out his cigarette. His face was in shadow.

  When I could bear the silence no longer I blurted out, “You’re angry, because I’m defying you—not doing the done thing—”

  “Angry but not surprised,” said my father. “After all, I’m well accustomed, aren’t I, to your failures in that direction. Very well—stay at the Manor. But if ever I hear you’re not making every effort to get on with Kester, I’m terminating your lease. Remember that.” And bidding me a curt good night he walked out of the room and left me damned nearly obliterated by the weight of my guilt and my shame.

  2

  I

  I WALKED BACK TO Penhale Manor through the country night. At first the lane was bounded by dry-stone walls, but later the hedges began, hawthorn and beech mingling with blackberry, elderberry and honeysuckle. In the fields yellow wild irises were still blooming amidst the buttercups. The occasional tree was bent sideways like the hedgerows, sculpted by the prevailing sea wind, but there was no wind that night, only a stillness broken periodically by a hooting owl. The sky was a mass of stars.

  I loved the country. As far as I was concerned London’s only redeeming feature was the Queen’s Hall.

  But I loved music even more than I loved the country. I had no formal musical training but I loved music better than anything else on earth.

  God, or what passed for him, had like an erratic tennis player lobbed me into this incredible family who thought famous sobriquets like The Eroica or The Pastoral referred to tours of the Bavarian Alps. How had my mother stood it? A glance at the titles in her collection of sheet music had told me that she had had a talent which had apparently brought even the most difficult pieces within her range. I knew they were difficult because when I tried to play by ear the ones I had heard on the wireless, I found myself improvising all the time, making up the notes which I couldn’t hear clearly in my mind.

  What could it have been like for my mother to be married to a man whose one supreme musical achievement lay in recognizing “The Blue Danube”? Well, I knew what it was like. Bella’s musical limit was Jack Buchanan. Obviously one can still live happily ever after even if one’s spouse doesn’t share one’s most important interest, but nevertheless I wondered what my parents had found to talk about. Maybe they had talked very happily without saying anything. I knew all about those conversations with my father when words were dutifully and affectionately batted back and forth but no communication whatsoever took place.

  “Of course I don’t want piano lessons, Papa. I wouldn’t be so sissyish.”

  “I’m glad you’re being so sensible, old chap.”

  “But … if I had lessons at school I’d have access to a piano there. Of course I’d rather be playing cricket, but—”

  “Yes, I’m delighted by your progress at cricket! Nothing could please me more!”

  And so on and so on. My father listened to me but he couldn’t hear what I wa
s saying. Would my mother have heard? Perhaps, but perhaps not. We tend to idealize the dead. But at least my mother would have understood how much I longed to play the piano.

  I could not quite remember her. I could see a dark graceful figure seated at the piano in the drawing room but I couldn’t see her face; I could only hear the Chopin polonaise that she was playing. But so absolutely did I connect her with music that when my father told me we were going back to Penhale Manor after three years in London I had said at once, “Is there still a piano in the drawing room?” Of course I’d known there was; we stayed at the Manor every time we returned to Gower to visit my grandfather, but what I had really meant was “Is Mama there? Has she come back?” I had been two when she died, and although my sister had said no one who died ever came back I had not entirely believed her. Even when I was five the disbelief had lingered, and I had returned to the Manor convinced I was going to find my mother again.

  And so I had, in a way.

  I so clearly remember going back. My father, who had just left Constance, looked wrecked. My sister Marian, puffy-eyed with weeping after being severed from Aunt Daphne, Elizabeth, Nanny and the governess, was at her most obnoxious. I didn’t know what was happening but whatever it was I wanted it to stop—I remember misbehaving in protest until my father lost his temper with me. After that I cried, which was just about the most debasing thing I could do, and sucked my thumb, a gesture that was even beyond debasement. My father looked so miserable that I was scared to death. Marian whined on. What a journey. My father must have thought it would never end.

  But it did end. The car drew up outside Penhale Manor, the front door opened and a magic lady came out.

  I knew straightaway she was magic. She was slim and pale and had fiery hair that floated over her shoulders, and green eyes which read thoughts before they could be spoken. She said, “Harry, how lovely to see you again!” and when I heard that word “again” I knew I had always known her; I knew she was my mother, looking different from the photographs but still my mother, and after that I no longer minded losing Nanny and leaving Aunt Daphne. In the end even Marian was appeased. Marian had developed a morbid cult of mother worship, but gradually all the photographs but one were put away and Marian said, “Mama liked Bronwen. I can remember.”

  Penhale Manor began to shimmer with happiness. Bronwen, as Kester once put it, waved her magic wand and suddenly my father, who had always been so serious, was laughing and joking, a different man altogether. After living a dreary well-regulated existence with Nanny and Constance I suddenly found myself tossed into a joyous family life. Bronwen had three children of her own. Marian giggled with Rhiannon. Dafydd and I went on expeditions together. Only the baby was left out, but as he grew up I appointed him my serf. He passed me my tools as I serviced my bike. He assisted in my test-tube experiments in the potting shed. He scoured the grounds for the best conkers for me every autumn. He even braved the hostility of the village shop to spend his pocket money on a birthday present for me. I remembered to pat his head occasionally to let him know what a nice little serf he was. It was a good life.

  When did the magic start to fade? Probably after Gerry was born in 1927. I was eight and my father’s favorite; idiotic Marian could hardly rival me, and although I’d heard talk that Evan was my father’s son I didn’t believe it. Evan had been there at the Manor before we arrived so in my eyes he was just someone my father had taken over along with Rhiannon and Dafydd. My father did say with perfect clarity, “This is your brother,” but I at once assumed he meant stepbrother. Marian told me later that I had been present at a big scene when she had told Nanny my father and Bronwen had produced a baby without being married, but I had no memory of this drama; at five years old I had been more interested in my toy train and more willing to accept Nanny’s reported declaration that babies never arrived unless a marriage had taken place.

  Then Gerry was born. Within hours it became clear to me that Nanny had told a fib. Gerry was my father’s son. So was Evan. Then it occurred to me that my father was much too delighted with the new baby and very much too fond of Evan. In other words, I realized I had two rivals. Fortunately Marian explained to me that they were bastards and could therefore never be as good as we were—poor old Evan and Gerry, poor little sods—but I had some unpleasant moments before I decided with sickening relief that my position was unimpaired. All things considered I was almost anxious to go away to prep school to recover.

  But I didn’t like being sent away from my magic lady and my happy home. And I didn’t like school either. Couldn’t say so, of course. Not the done thing. And I had to do the done thing or else my father would have been disappointed in me, and if he were disappointed in me he might have started overlooking the fact that Evan and Gerry were bastards and making them his favorites instead. I decided I had to be so perfect that they would never outshine me.

  As a matter of fact I rather enjoyed trying to be perfect, and once I was used to school I soon realized that the most painless way to survive it was to excel at everything. Luckily I was born athletic with a first-class memory. One can get a long way on athleticism and a first-class memory, and by God I traveled far. My father was thrilled by my progress. By the time Lance and Sian were born I was so secure in my position as the apple of my father’s eye that I even deigned to shake the babies’ rattles for them occasionally.

  I was twelve when Sian was born. Two more magic years to go but the magic was fading fast now, slipping through our fingers, and the darkness was closing in. I knew about the trouble, we all did, but I thought it could never affect me. I was legitimate and a gentleman. Dafydd might have to be boarded out in Cardiff and Rhiannon might choose to live with her aunt at the Home Farm and Evan might have difficulty in finding a school that would take him, but no one was ever going to be hostile to me just because my father lived openly with his mistress. My father said his action was right because he and Bronwen loved each other, but he needn’t have bothered to explain. I knew it was right. I could see it, feel it. It wasn’t my father’s fault that he couldn’t marry Bronwen and do the done thing. That was the fault of Constance, the wicked witch I could barely remember. I thought that my magic lady would always be able to ward off the witch’s spells, but this was no fairy tale and I saw her waste away, become thin and tired, pale and unhappy. I knew the end was near when Rhiannon and Dafydd went away to London because they said they couldn’t stand living any longer among people who regarded their mother as a whore. But I tried not to see the end coming. I couldn’t bear to see it. I looked the other way.

  I was at Harrow when Evan was rejected by the headmaster of Briarwood and Bronwen made her decision to leave. I hated Harrow. Couldn’t say so, of course. Not the done thing. Everyone went to Harrow in my family and everyone liked it, so that was that. I did try to tell my father that the only thing I enjoyed there was messing around in a laboratory, but he didn’t hear me. He just said yes, science was fun, but how glad he was that I was obviously a born classicist like Uncle Robert.

  I wanted to confide in Bronwen but by that time she always seemed to be either having a migraine or turning out the nursery. I almost confided in my friends at school, but I had realized that science wasn’t quite the done thing and I was afraid that if I confessed how very much I liked it people would think I was different. Terrible things happened to people who were different, not only to little Evan, scurrying home in tears from the village shop, but to the misfits at Harrow who wouldn’t or couldn’t play the Great English Public School Game. I was a survivor and I knew what I had to do to survive. Survival was cricket and rugger, Latin and Greek, keeping a stiff upper lip and doing the done thing. So I kept my mouth shut, battened down the hatches over my emotions and survived.

  “And how’s everything going, Harry?” said my father when I was fourteen. “No problems?”

  “Oh no, sir, none at all.”

  Did I know I was lying? No. The truth is we’re all mesmerized by our upbringing, and alt
hough I knew that the life I was living bore no relation to my secret inclinations I absolutely accepted that there was nothing I could do about it. Rebellion would have been inconceivable and I was too young for self-analysis. Children, blinkered by the vision that’s been foisted on them, always are. It’s the adults who are supposed to see when something’s going wrong but the adults in my world were far too busy with their own problems to pay any attention to mine.

  Bronwen began to talk of visiting cousins in Vancouver.

  “Is Bronwen all right, Father?”

  “Oh yes, she’s fine.”

  How could he say that when she so obviously wasn’t?

  “Father, how long will Bronwen be in Canada?”

  “Oh, not long.”

  I wanted to say “They will come back, won’t they?” But I couldn’t. I wanted to say “Please tell me what’s going on!” But I couldn’t. I wanted to say “Is it because she doesn’t love you anymore?” But I couldn’t. I couldn’t talk to him and he couldn’t talk to me.

  “Good luck, Harry,” said my father as I left home to begin the summer term of 1933. “I do hope the cricket goes well.”

  Bronwen just hugged me and was silent.

  I was silent too. Or at least I did say something but it had no meaning. I said, “Have a wonderful holiday in Canada.”

  Bronwen nodded and stooped over Sian who was tugging at her skirt. I knew then she wasn’t coming back, but I shut my mind against the knowledge. I decided that if I didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t happen.

  Three weeks later my father arrived at school to take me out to lunch. We drove to an inn in the rural country north of the Middlesex border. I remember we talked continuously about cricket, both my own efforts in the second eleven and the past winter’s test matches with Australia. We were still discussing Larwood’s body-line bowling as we sat down at our table. My father ordered us half a pint of beer apiece and two portions of jugged hare.

  I never ate jugged hare again.