The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “But it made me feel less unhappy.” The words, long suppressed, streamed out of my mouth before I could censor them. “I’ve been so unhappy, Father, so bloody miserable, I just didn’t know how I was ever going to bear such misery, but Bella made it bearable—and now even Bella’s been taken away from me, oh, how can I bear it, I want it all back, I want a home, a real home with a mother in it, I can’t bear living at Oxmoon when everyone hates me, I can’t bear having no home—oh, Father, go to Canada, bring Bronwen back, please, Father, please, please, please.

  My father put his arm around me. He said simply, “I want to but I can’t. It would be cruel to Bronwen to wreck her life all over again, but don’t worry, Harry, because I’m going to put things right. I’ll get you that home you so badly need, I swear I will, no matter how high the price I have to pay.”

  VI

  He went back to his estranged wife.

  At first I thought he did it just because I’d said I wanted a home with a mother in it, but later I suspected my disaster had so shattered him that he had conceived of the return to Constance as a form of atonement. Blaming himself as he did he took the obvious action—not simply because he wanted to suffer, but because it provided the only alleviation of a guilt that had become unendurable. Years later he confessed to me that he had been riddled with guilt about Francesca, my little half-sister, and although he had resented Constance to the point of hatred, he had at heart felt guilty about her too for the way he had abandoned their marriage. He felt guilty about Bronwen, guilty about his four illegitimate children and now finally he felt guilty about me. He was overloaded with guilt, and perhaps he even thought he would break down unless he took a radical step to lighten his burden. He went back.

  How he did it I don’t know. He never spoke of what he must have gone through, but when term ended a week later he fetched me himself from Harrow and said, “We’re not going back to Oxmoon. You’ve got a nice big room in a new home, and there’s a piano in the drawing room.” I was touched when he mentioned the piano. I suppose he thought that if I had any doubts this would convince me that he was doing the right thing.

  When he was first married to Constance we had lived in a house in Chester Square, but she had moved after her father’s death to his mansion on Eaton Walk. I had been there a few times but could not remember it in any detail so I was astonished by its size and grandeur.

  My room was, as my father had promised, very nice. All my possessions had been scooped out of Oxmoon, whisked to London in double-quick time and arranged on various shelves. My father gave me my Christmas present early; it was a new gramophone, and Constance, having meticulously examined my record collection and analyzed my taste, gave me some new records, all chamber music by Bach and Vivaldi. I found I even had a new little serf, nine-year-old Francesca, who spent much time gazing up at me with shining eyes. Constance said she intended to take us both to a performance of The Messiah at the Albert Hall, and would I like to go to Covent Garden? I asked warily what opera she had in mind. Just because I’m musical doesn’t mean I’m not discriminating. Quite the reverse.

  What surprised me most about Constance, whom I could hardly remember, was that she was so young. Over the years I had built up this picture of a mean old hag, ugly as sin, who never opened her mouth except to say “no” to a divorce, so it was a considerable shock to me when I now found she was a woman barely thirty, very smart, good-looking, cultured and poised. She took everything with lethal seriousness—the arts, her daughter, international politics, her social obligations, her marriage, her charities, the Prince of Wales, the Marx Brothers—everything. When presented with a new subject she would study it, master it and file it away in her mind for future reference, and as I was a new subject, as far as Constance was concerned, I presently became aware that I was being studied with a sympathetic but chillingly earnest interest.

  This maddened me, although I took care to be polite to her. After all, my father had made this great sacrifice in order that I should be happy, so now I had to be happy. No choice. But I didn’t like being observed as if I were some guinea pig in a laboratory. I didn’t like those gray dirty noisy London streets. And after a while I knew I didn’t like that house on Eaton Walk, even though it contained everything a right-minded boy could want. It was so cold and formal, so quiet and lifeless. I was used to noise and mess and people laughing as they all relaxed together. No one laughed much at Eaton Walk except Francesca, living her well-ordered little life with her nanny and governess, but she was kept out of sight most of the time in the nurseries. Marian floated in and out saying how simply wonderful everything was, and Constance, mastering the subject of Marian with typical skill, chatted to her kindly about men and clothes and the social calendar. But in the new year before I returned to school I paid a nocturnal visit to Marian’s bedroom and demanded to know what she really thought of our new home. I was in such a muddle myself by that time, not understanding how everything could be so right yet so wrong, that even my vacuous sister seemed a desirable confidante.

  “Thank God,” said Marian. “I thought you were happy as a lark and I was beginning to wonder if I was going mad.”

  “But what is it, Marian? Why is it so ghastly here?”

  “My dear, it’s her, of course. That woman was born to be the patron saint of tedium.”

  “But I thought you liked her!”

  “Of course I like her—I’ve got to, haven’t I? What choice do I have now that Papa’s been so divinely noble and unselfish in order to give me an aristocratic home and a socially acceptable stepmother?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Go down on my knees and thank God as soon as they leave for the Côte d’Azur. Then I can go to Aunt Daphne.”

  “What about when they come back?”

  “I’ll simply have to get married before the men in white coats arrive to remove me to a padded cell.”

  It was at Easter when she met Rory Kinsella again. Aunt Ginevra organized a huge family reunion to mark my father’s return to his wife, and we all dutifully turned up at Oxmoon to do the done thing.

  Kester was flouncing around as usual playing master of the house and host to all his adoring family. It was stupid of me but I couldn’t resist needling him with a sex joke, and the silly old sod blanched as if sex scared him stiff. Aunt Ginevra overheard and was livid with me. Silly old bitch. I was in a great state of misery at the time because going back to Gower reminded me of Bella and I wanted so much to see her. But Bella wasn’t at Stourham Hall. She and her aunt had gone to Geneva directly after Christmas and were not due to return till June. Everyone said to Eleanor that they did hope her Aunt Angela would finally find a cure for her asthma, and what a wonderful experience a few months abroad would be for Belinda.

  I tried to shut out my misery by playing “The Blue Danube” in the ballroom in memory of my grandfather, but that bloody Thomas shouted for “The Black Bottom” and someone put a Charleston on the gramophone, so I gave up. Marian danced a lot with Rory and later told me how much she liked him. Typical. It would take an idiotic girl like Marian to fall for a layabout like Rory Kinsella. He worked in the City and called himself a broker, but I don’t believe he was ever more than a clerk. Marian said she thought he was sexy. Typical again. He was a heavily built redhead who prided himself on his questionable Irish charm.

  “But he’s such fun!” sighed Marian. “And the lovely thing is that he’s one of the family so I don’t have to explain anything—he’s grown up with Papa’s peculiar situation and takes it for granted. Heavens, he even thinks it’s all rather amusing!”

  It would take an oaf like Rory to find stark tragedy amusing. However mutual adversity had made me fond of Marian so I kept my opinions to myself, but in fact I kept all my opinions to myself at that time; there was no one in whom I was willing to confide.

  In June at half-term my father told me Bella was back at Stourham Hall. The baby, a girl, had lived only a few hours but Bella had made a c
omplete recovery.

  “Thomas and Eleanor are getting married next month,” said my father, “but luckily it’s the day before school breaks up so we won’t have to invent an excuse for you not to attend. Now, Harry, I want you to give me your word not to communicate with that child. I’m sure all she wants is to forget how much she’s suffered, so you’re under an absolute moral duty to leave her well alone.”

  That settled that. One couldn’t argue with an absolute moral duty. I gave him my word and tried not to let him see how miserable I was.

  By this time my father had talked to me—or tried to talk to me—about sex. I suppose he thought better late than never, but he got into such an agonizing muddle that in the end I cried out in despair, “It doesn’t matter, I don’t want to do it anymore.” This was true; the horrific consequences of my sexual experience now made the thought of sex repugnant to me, and this truth very fortunately proved to be the saving of us both because it enabled my father to pull himself together.

  My father’s problem was that he was terrified I would now want to seduce every girl in sight so he felt obliged to lecture me on morality. But of course he was deeply and painfully aware that he was the last person entitled to lecture anyone about sexual morality. However once he had grasped that I didn’t want to turn into a juvenile Don Juan, he was liberated from the compulsion to moralize and could focus on the remote future when I would be just another man who needed to know how to live a sensible private life.

  This he could cope with. He said practically enough, “You won’t feel repelled forever,” and for a time he conquered his Victorian streak sufficiently to talk about medical facts and contraception. I was profoundly grateful to him. I was also profoundly relieved to discover he was quite capable of being down-to-earth about sex when he wasn’t flagellating himself for the poor example he had set me. But then to my despair his Victorian streak reasserted itself and he got bogged down in morality again. I suppose he thought closing a discussion of sex without any reference to morality wouldn’t be the done thing, but it was hopeless. He floundered around talking about sin like some mid-nineteenth-century evangelical fanatic until in the end, not being unintelligent, I forgot about being embarrassed and became intrigued instead. It occurred to me for the first time that the idea of sin—not merely sexual sin but wrongdoing of any kind—frightened my father very much, far more than it frightened any other adult I knew. In fact I couldn’t think of another adult who was actually frightened of sin. Most people seemed content to leave the definition of sin to clergymen while they themselves tranquilly led their law-abiding daily lives. But not my father. He seemed to be obsessed by a vision in which absolutely anyone was capable of absolutely anything while the road to hell yawned perpetually and inexorably on the far side of his famous line. I was fifteen by then, young enough to be deeply impressed by his sincerity but old enough to think he was being most peculiar.

  “But Father, why are you getting in such a sweat over this? I know you’re not exactly a saint but you’re a good man and I know very well you’d never dream of doing anything really wrong.”

  “Ah, but temptation’s everywhere,” said my father, “and anyone can make a mistake and yield. I’ve seen a good man destroyed by a past evil he couldn’t endure, and terrible things happen, as I well know, to people who fail to recognize evil and reject it—to people who fail to draw the line.”

  Off he went on his damned line again. Most odd. I listened respectfully but try as I would I still couldn’t see why he was getting into such a flap. After all, surely anyone with a reasonable upbringing could spot evil—what an emotional Victorian word!—a mile off and then either take evasive action or walk out to embrace it with outstretched arms.

  I thought a great deal about this eccentric and disturbed side of my father’s personality, but all I could conclude was that although he was not religious he was profoundly superstitious. I saw for the first time then how Bronwen’s mystical streak would have appealed to him; although he seemed in so many ways to be a typically rational Englishman he was at rock bottom a Welsh romantic, and as soon as I realized this I wondered how on earth he was surviving with Constance. But I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on that, not at first. I was too busy thinking about Bella.

  I was finding that instead of receding from my mind as time passed the thought of her ordeal was preying on me more than ever. I wanted to write and say sorry, sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean it, I liked you so much, I’d have done anything rather than hurt you. But of course I couldn’t write because I had an absolute moral duty not to communicate with her. So I started to long for another of her illiterate letters. I could see it so clearly in my mind. Dear Harry, how are you, I am well now, what an awful business but don’t worry, I don’t blame you at all …

  What a fantasy. I knew my father was right and that she would never want to see me again but still I went on longing irrationally for the absolution which only she could give.

  Presently the nightmares started. I dreamed a nurse handed me a bloodstained lump of flesh and told me to bury it. I placed it in an old shoe box and buried it in the potting shed but when the earth was replaced I heard little fists beating on the lid and demanding to be let out. I scraped the earth away again and ripped off the lid but the box was empty. Yet as soon as I reburied it the fists started to beat again for release.

  Crazy. Had to pull myself together before Constance guessed something was wrong.

  “Father, you didn’t tell Constance, did you?”

  “Good God, no!” said my father, unintentionally speaking volumes about his marriage. “I never tell her anything.”

  That was the last honest conversation I had with him before I messed myself up again. Certainly I never dared ask him what he really thought when Marian messed herself up with Rory Kinsella and had to rush to the altar in double-quick time.

  “But why shouldn’t I go to bed with Rory if I love him?” screamed Marian at my father in front of us all when she was obliged to confess the news of her imminent wedding. “Bronwen went to bed with you!”

  My father said with great politeness, “Constance—Harry—excuse us, if you please,” and we withdrew. But he was never the same after that. I saw him become remote, detached, enigmatic. He absorbed himself in his work, and as his reputation as a businessman increased, so he seemed to withdraw behind the facade of his wealth and success. He might have been living behind bulletproof glass, and all the while I sensed he was acting, just as I was, pretending to be happy because the alternative was too terrible to contemplate.

  Eventually I began to pray he might leave Constance again. I became convinced that if only we could return to Penhale Manor the bulletproof glass would shatter and I would rediscover the unpretentious hero in blue dungarees who had laughed and joked with Bronwen, but we stayed on in London, and my father remained the quiet serious stranger whom it was virtually impossible to know.

  I became so desperate that in the end I tried to analyze his marriage. Was it likely to collapse or wasn’t it? What the hell was going on? I wasn’t sure, but once I started studying the two of them I began to get some bizarre ideas. I could see that Constance loved him but at the same time I sensed her simmering anger. No doubt she felt, as I did, that despite his physical presence at her side he had staged some massive mental retreat. They seemed to find conversation difficult and I thought that angered her too. After all, there she was, mastering all those interesting subjects in order to provide him with fascinating conversation, and my father obviously didn’t give a damn.

  Yet he wasn’t indifferent to her. I could see she often bored him so much that he snapped at her, but he always made amends by giving her a kiss, and when I saw how much she liked those kisses—perhaps even went out of her way to needle him into giving them—I saw to my horror that he liked them too. There was no sign that he begrudged them; he could have been evasive but he chose not to be, and gradually it occurred to me that the dreary surface of their marriage might be con
cealing a mutually satisfactory sexual relationship. I could well imagine Constance being obsessive about sex. I could picture her studying it, mastering it and serving it up with poker-faced skill in her latest Parisian negligee.

  And my father? It took me some time to work out what was going on there, but one day in the holidays the penny finally dropped. I was playing a Beethoven sonata in the drawing room and when I reached the end I thought what a miracle it was that whenever I played the piano I could so absolutely forget what I didn’t want to remember. Then I realized with an intuitive leap of the imagination that this was the only possible reason for my father’s continuing sexual relationship with his wife. He used sex as I used the piano: to forget, to escape, to enjoy himself in the way he liked best. The fact that she was Constance was probably irrelevant. Just as I could play on any piano, so he could no doubt gratify himself with any female, but naturally it was useful to him that his own wife could provide him with whatever quality and quantity of sex he needed. It saved him from the bore of looking elsewhere.

  I had often wondered if he had mistresses but now I saw that he probably wouldn’t consider extramarital sex worth the effort. I doubted that my father was by nature promiscuous. Indeed everything I knew about him suggested he would fight hard against a very natural inclination to sleep with every woman he fancied. If he had a relationship with his wife that allowed him to exercise his sexuality without constraint I could quite see him thankfully drawing the line against any immoral activity and settling down to do God-only-knew-what with Constance whenever the bedroom door was closed.

  What a picture that conjured up! By this time sheer biology was conquering my revulsion toward sex which had followed the disaster with Bella, and I spent a lot of time thinking of nothing but intercourse. In a paroxysm of guilt I had promised my father I wouldn’t go near a woman until I had left school at eighteen but now, reduced to pornographic visions and endless masturbation, I regretted having to live like a monk. I wouldn’t have minded supplementing my piano playing with a little sex now and then to ease the dreariness of that Belgravia jail, but of course I couldn’t have broken my promise to my father. That wouldn’t have been the done thing at all.