Of course I knew why he had come to see me, but when I realized that he was unable to speak of what had happened—the jugged hare was in front of us by that time—I said, “They’re not coming back, are they?”
He shook his head. I thought he was still incapable of speech but at last he did say, not looking at me, “It was the right thing—the only thing—to do.”
He went on talking, saying there had to be a new life for the sake of the children, but I barely heard him. As far as I was concerned everything had been said. The line had been drawn and everyone had done the done thing and sunk behind it without trace.
“She left a letter for you.”
He was holding out an envelope.
“Thank you.” I stowed it out of sight in my jacket.
“If you want to read it—”
“Not at the moment, thank you, Father.” I suddenly couldn’t stand to see him so upset, couldn’t stand it. Fear of a mutual breakdown gripped me. I almost hated him for exposing us both to such a terrible danger. Pushing the jugged hare round and round my plate I began to talk again about cricket.
Later, back at school, I found a quiet corner in a remote passage by a linen cupboard and opened Bronwen’s letter.
My dearest Harry, it breaks my heart to go but I can’t bear to see the little ones suffer, your father will explain, don’t blame your father, he’s a good kind decent man, it’s not his fault, I’ll always love him and I’ll always love you too just as if you were my own. I’d like to beg you to write but it would make things worse, drawing out the suffering, so better not. Stand by your father, he’ll need you so much, he’s so proud of you and in the midst of all this misery it’s such a comfort to him to know you’re happy at school and doing so well. Know that I’ll look back often as we move farther apart in time, but remember too that time is a circle and that one day we may look not back but forward and see each other face to face again. Always your loving and devoted friend, BRONWEN.
I tore the letter into tiny pieces, flushed it down the nearest lavatory and went out to the cricket nets.
Couldn’t let anyone see something was wrong.
Because of some minor fever my father was unable to return to Harrow at half-term to take me out, but Marian and my mother’s aunt Charlotte motored down from London. Aunt Charlotte had recently presented Marian at court and was now acting as her chaperone, although Marian spent most of her time trying to escape to Aunt Daphne who was far more modern in her outlook.
“My dear,” said Marian to me as we all motored into the West End to have lunch at the Ritz, “isn’t it simply too tragic about Bronwen? But of course”—this was for Aunt Charlotte—“it’s all for the best. The situation really was quite impossible.”
We could say nothing more at lunch but afterwards when Aunt Charlotte retired to the ladies’ cloakroom we had the chance for a word on our own.
“Did she write to you?” I said.
“Yes. It was rather sweet.” Marian’s eyes filled with tears but she added violently: “But really, the situation was impossible. The other day I heard someone say in the chaperone’s corner at one of the dances, ‘Oh, there’s Marian Godwin—her father has the most extraordinary ménage in Wales, my dear, and the poor girl’s been brought up by a Welsh peasant!’ And it was just the same at St. Astrith’s. ‘Oh, Marian Godwin can’t ask anyone home, my dear, because her situation’s so peculiar!’ I mean, really … really … it was beyond everything. And I’ve tried so hard to be ordinary, acting as if the only people I ever met were ladies and gentlemen, behaving as if the working classes were all quite beneath me—heavens, I think some people have even thought I was a snob!—but it was all for nothing, people always knew, people always found out, and oh, how I hated being different and everyone thinking I was so peculiar—”
“So you’re glad she’s gone.”
“Yes, I am!” said Marian, but she was crying. “It wasn’t her fault,” she whispered. “She was sweet. But it shouldn’t have gone on so long, it should have been stopped—”
“Well, you can’t say Constance didn’t do her best.” A second later a horrifying thought occurred to me. “My God, Marian, you don’t suppose—”
“No, it’s all right, he swore to me he’d never go back to her.”
I didn’t care much for Marian, who was brainless and unmusical and altogether a highly expendable member of the female race, but a sister’s a sister and after that conversation I detected a remote note of harmony between us. It was good to know I wasn’t alone in feeling rotten about Bronwen and sagging with relief that there was no possibility of a return to the witch in Belgravia.
But there were other possibilities almost as bad. When I arrived back in Gower for the summer holidays I found that my father was staying at Oxmoon because he couldn’t face Penhale Manor. To make matters worse, he was still emotionally in pieces and had no idea what he was going to do with himself. The whole situation was a nightmare.
I had been assigned a bedroom that had once belonged to my uncle Lion but I made no attempt to open the packing cases there which contained my possessions. I just sat on the bed and longed futilely for home. Later I went back to Penhale Manor but it was all shut up. Only the door of the potting shed was open. I went in and remembered my little serf, helping me with my experiments. Behind the flowerpots I found a smashed test tube. That was when the full magnitude of the disaster reached me; that was the moment when I had no choice but to acknowledge what had happened. I was dispossessed. My happy home had been smashed up. I’d lost my magic lady. I cried all the way to Oxmoon, a great big lout of fourteen sobbing like a baby in nappies. Disgusting. My eyes were so red that I knew I couldn’t go down to lunch. Despicable. I hated myself for being so weak.
Eventually when I didn’t turn up in the dining room Aunt Ginevra came to see if I was all right, but I had bathed my eyes by that time and looked pale but passable.
“Is something wrong, Harry?”
“Oh no, Aunt Ginevra. Everything’s fine.”
She gave me one of her shrewd but not unfriendly stares. “You surprise me,” she said drily. “If I were you I’d be feeling wretched. Why don’t we talk it over? I liked Bronwen, you know. I was very fond of her.”
Something terrible was happening to my throat. Damn the woman, get her out.
“Oh, I quite accept all that, Aunt Ginevra. Nothing more I want to say about it, thank you.”
She wavered but then Kester called her and she seized the chance to wash her hands of me. “All right, Harry, but do say something, won’t you, if you’re feeling awful? I know John’s not much use at the moment.”
I hated her. “My father’s absolutely all right!” How I got the words out I didn’t know. My throat felt as if it were housing a lump the size of a cricket ball.
“Mu-um!” sang out Kester, poor old Kester, poor old sod, who had this utterly miserable life being pampered to death in his palatial mansion by everyone in sight. “I’ve got something terribly funny to tell you! Honestly, I laughed so much I nearly split my sides!”
Seconds later they were convulsed with mirth in the corridor. I listened, tears streaming down my cheeks, but finally I pulled myself together and went in search of my father.
I found him drinking whisky in the library as he pretended to write a letter.
“Father, I was just wondering whether to open those packing cases in my room but then I thought I wouldn’t bother if we’re not going to be here much longer.”
“Ah.” There was a pause while he drank some whisky.
“Father … are we likely to be here much longer?”
“I don’t know.”
Another pause. I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there and waited for him to help me, although what form the help should take I had no idea.
“You’re all right, aren’t you, Harry?”
“Oh yes, Father. Fine.”
I saw now with a terrible clarity that I’d lost him as well as Bronwen. My bright
cheerful affectionate father had been wiped out by this battered stranger who could do no more than drink whisky and attempt a fragmented parody of a conversation. Once I realized this I knew there was no point in waiting for help so I slipped away.
I stood in the hall and wondered what to do but my mind was blank. In the end I wandered outside. I crossed the croquet lawn to the woods, and when I reached the summerhouse I paused to look back. Then I remembered that this wasn’t the first time in my life that I’d been dispossessed. I remembered my grandfather patting me on the head, slipping me five shillings and saying to my father, “He’s got Blanche’s coloring but there’s a look of you there too, John,” and I knew he was pleased. “Tell me the story of how you saved Oxmoon, Grandfather,” I would say to him again and again, and he would tell me how he had found the vital information he needed by throwing a book at a rat in the library.
“And I made Oxmoon a great house,” he said, holding my hand as we strolled together through the woods to the ruined tower of Humphrey de Mohun, “a great house, and they all came to Oxmoon, everyone came, and we decked the ballroom with red roses and we drank champagne and we danced to ‘The Blue Danube.’ ”
“I can play ‘The Blue Danube,’ ” I said, so we went to the ballroom and I played it for him on the untuned broken-down old piano there. It was near the end of my grandfather’s life by that time and Oxmoon was sunk deep in decay.
“What a clever little fellow you are!” said my grandfather smiling at me, and when he gave me another five shillings I knew I was his favorite.
“I’d like to make Oxmoon a great house too, Grandfather, just as you did.”
He gave me his brilliant smile. He had bright blue eyes, just like my father’s. He said nothing.
“I’d like to live at Oxmoon one day and be just like you.”
My grandfather looked away. His mouth trembled, and suddenly he seemed very old and very careworn. All he said in the end was “I’d like that too, Harry.”
So of course I thought I’d inherit Oxmoon. Then Kester started boasting that he was to inherit. Naturally I didn’t believe him, but my father explained that Kester had to inherit because he was the son of the eldest son and eldest sons always came first; it was the done thing.
So that was that.
Afterwards whenever I looked at Oxmoon I thought, Silly old house. I don’t care.
But I did.
I cared now. I looked back across the lawn to Oxmoon and thought, Dispossessed. I had compensated myself for the loss of Oxmoon by becoming fiercely devoted to Penhale Manor, but now that the Manor too had been stripped from me I found myself face to face with Oxmoon again. I looked at it and saw clearly how much more alluring it was than pretty, charming but commonplace little Penhale Manor. Little manor houses are two a penny throughout the length and breadth of the British Isles, but there could only be one Oxmoon, only one Georgian mansion slumbering in its grounds like a lost Welsh lion and waiting for the master who would comb its bedraggled mane.
My sense of deprivation was suddenly so strong that I couldn’t bear to look at the house for a moment longer. I ran off into the woods to the ruined tower but even the jackdaws in the tangled ivy there seemed to scream at me, “Dispossessed!”—which was a very stupid and improbable illusion, because the noises jackdaws make sound nothing like “dispossessed” at all. I went on through the woods. On the far side of the grounds there was a door in the wall, and letting myself out I ran down the footpath, crossed the road and set off across the moors which rose steadily to the summit of Rhossili Downs in the distance.
The sky was bright blue and the bracken was growing tall. A warm wind blew into my face from the sea and ruffled the manes of the wild ponies as they grazed by the megalithic stones known as Sweyn’s Houses. It was an ancient burial chamber reputed to be the tomb of Sweyn, founder of Sweyn’s-Ey, as Swansea had once been called. Vikings, Celts, Normans, Saxons—they’d all come to Gower in the old days to leave their mark upon the landscape.
“And they all came to Oxmoon,” my grandfather had said, referring to his guests of long ago. “Everyone came to Oxmoon.”
How could I stand living there a day longer when I knew it could never be mine? Never. What a terrible word that was. Never, never, never. Oxmoon would never be mine.
And why was it never going to be mine? Because my grandfather had done the done thing by leaving it to the heir of his eldest son. And why had Bronwen gone to Canada? Because, as my father had said, it was the right thing, the only thing to do. And why was I being deprived of piano lessons? Because it wasn’t the done thing for a boy to waste time pursuing artistic ambitions. I was being sacrificed on the altar of The Done Thing, that was the truth of it, and oh God, how I hated the done thing. But of course I could never have said so. That wouldn’t have been the done thing at all.
I paused, debating whether to go on or turn back, but I knew that if I went back I would be guaranteed to feel miserable so I went on—I could have stopped, but I went on. That, I was to discover later, was the story of my life, but I was only fourteen then and my life had hardly begun.
I reached the summit of the ridge. The view was so stupendous that for a few precious moments I was jolted out of my slough of despair. Below me the Downs fell away abruptly to the three golden miles of Rhossili Beach, and beyond the sands the long lines of the breakers creamed languidly on the edge of a glittering sea. Far away to my left the little village of Rhossili was perched on top of the high cliffs that formed one arm of the bay, while far away to my right the sand burrows of Llangennith, huge grass-flecked dunes, swirled towards the lesser arm of the bay and the Loughor Estuary beyond Llanmadoc Hill. Looking back inland I could see the blue gleam of the river, and beyond Harding’s Down I glimpsed the village of Reynoldston shimmering in the heat haze atop the spine of Cefh Bryn. All was pastoral peace, like a landscape in a dream, and when I turned to the glittering sea I saw it as if from a great distance, as if it were a vision of happiness far beyond my reach. I noticed that the Worm’s Head, the tidal peninsula beyond Rhossili, was about to be cut off; I could see the white foam as the waters roared over the Shipway.
There were a few holidaymakers below me on the sands but the beach was not easy of access and was always sparsely populated. Certainly I assumed I was alone on top of the Downs. That was why, when someone called my name a moment later, I nearly jumped out of my skin with surprise.
“Harry! Oy! Come over here a minute!”
Peering around I saw a girl lying on a rock in the distance. Who was she? No idea. Unable to think how I could escape from such an unwelcome encounter, I muttered a curse under my breath and trudged off along the track towards her. I kept my eyes on the ground and frowned heavily to convey that I was feeling unsociable.
“Thank goodness you turned up,” said the girl as soon as I was within earshot. “I’m trying to raise the Devil and I need a Druid. Do you by any chance know how to fuck?”
I jumped as if I’d been shot, and looked up.
The girl was stark naked.
I recognized Belinda Stourham.
II
“Well, don’t just stand there goggling at me like a lost bullfrog,” she said crossly. “What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a girl naked before?”
“Well, actually … no. No, I can’t say I have.”
“Doesn’t your father keep picture books of ladies with no clothes on? Mine does. Well, never mind, don’t let’s waste any more time—do you know how to fuck or don’t you? I thought it just meant making a rude noise, but I must have misunderstood the stableboys when I heard them talking about it because although I’ve done everything Annie-May said I haven’t managed to raise the Devil. But on the other hand Annie-May did mention a Druid. So if you could play the Druid—”
“Who’s Annie-May?”
“Our housemaid. Look, don’t waste time, I haven’t got all day. If you’re not interested in being obliging—”
“Of course I am. But I
don’t quite see—”
“Annie-May says that in the old days people used to dance around a fallen-down standing stone—you know, one of the upright rocks from an old burial chamber—and then the most beautiful girl would take off all her clothes and lie on the fallen-down standing stone and fuck. So would the Druid, and while he was fucking he’d say a spell and the Devil would appear in a cloud of sulfur and brimstone. Well, I thought it sounded rather fun, so I decided to have a go. No one’s breathing down my neck at the moment because my stupid old governess is on her summer holiday and stupid old Aunt Angela’s in bed with a liver chill, and it seemed a good opportunity to go off and hunt for a suitable rock—and look how lovely this one is, almost flat and with the best view in the world. I know it’s not from a burial chamber, but I’m sure the Devil wouldn’t mind if only I could raise him … I say, I do wish you’d stop looking so odd. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing exactly. But Belinda—”
“I’m called Bella now. Daddy’s gone crackers and cries whenever anyone says my mother’s name. I wanted to be called Linda but Aunt Angela said that was a common name, you know, not the done thing, so I have to be Bella instead.”
“Not the done thing. I see. Yes. Actually, Bella, you wouldn’t know this because you’re too young, but fucking’s not the done thing either, not unless you’re grown up and married. So—”
“Oh rubbish, Annie-May does it all the time and she’s not married, she’s only fifteen! Anyway, who cares? I don’t want to do the done thing like boring old Aunt. I want to be mad and bad like Eleanor who wears trousers and drinks whisky and says ‘What the hell’—in fact I hope I’ll be much madder and badder than she is by the time I’m thirty-one; but meanwhile I’m thirteen, and I’m going to start my mad bad career by raising the Devil. After all, one’s got to start somewhere. Now, for the last time, are you going to be useful or aren’t you? Because if you’re not …”
I took a quick look around but there was no one in sight along the summit of the Downs as far as the eye could see. Far below us the waves streamed languidly over the sands and the sea faded into a blue horizon. It was the landscape of myth. The girl was part of the myth too, a naked siren upon a rock, and when I stepped into the myth to join her, I found that reality, unbearable reality, was suddenly a million light-years away.
The Wheel of Fortune Page 97