My liberation finally came when I was eighteen and won an open scholarship to Oxford. To make amends to my father I had slaved at Harrow, giving up all thought of specializing in the sciences and dedicating myself to mastering the classics. I mastered them. My father was thrilled and for a short precious time set aside the bulletproof glass to give me a glimpse of the man in blue dungarees who had laughed with Bronwen. Naturally I was just as thrilled as he was that I was finally turning out to be the son he wanted me to be, and it was not until I began my studies up at Oxford that I realized just what a terrible mistake I’d made.
The truth was that I had no genuine inclination towards classical scholarship, and a logical mind, a scientific preoccupation with accuracy and that old friend my trusty memory were no longer enough now to guarantee my success. I became bored with my studies. I tried to whip up interest but found there was no interest left to whip up. Unable to cope with this lassitude and its inevitable implications, unable to face the fact that I was intellectually incapable of pursuing knowledge in a discipline that did not appeal to me, I cut lectures, drank too much, started fooling around with women. My tutor spoke to me. I did try to pull myself together but I knew I was hopelessly adrift, and in the May of 1938, after taking an exam I knew I had no chance of passing, I was caught with a girl in my room, and soon after that my father received the letter which told him I was being sent down.
VII
No six cows in a field this time. Just the drawing room at Eaton Walk, a wasteland of beige carpet studded with arid groups of antiques. Outside it was raining as it can only rain in London, dirty water dripping drearily from drab skies. It had been raining ever since I’d left Oxford. Despite the stuffiness of the room I felt dank and cold.
“I don’t understand, Harry.”
“Wrong subject. Sorry. Should have specialized in the sciences at school and then read engineering.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?”
“Thought engineering wasn’t the done thing.”
“But my dear Harry—”
“I knew I didn’t have your gift for modern languages but I thought I could make it up to you by being a classical scholar like Uncle Robert.”
“But for Christ’s sake. …”
We stammered away, groping for the truth, both of us damned nearly speechless with pain, until finally my father managed to say, “You’ll please me best by being the son you are, not the son you think I want you to be. If you want to be an engineer—”
“I don’t. Not really. All I’ve ever wanted to be is a pianist.”
“But my dear Harry, there’s no money or future in that!”
“Yes, I know, silly of me, doesn’t matter, too late now anyway, concert pianists have to start young and train for years and years … But never mind, I’ll be an engineer.”
“I thought you just told me you didn’t want to be an engineer! Harry, what is it you really want to do?”
“I want to go home.”
“But this is your home!”
Silence. More ghastly truths surfaced. My father shoved back his hair awkwardly and turned aside as if he could not bear to look at me any longer.
“I want to go back to Penhale Manor,” I said.
“To farm?” He was still struggling for composure.
I had had no thought beyond returning home, but now I saw not only a life I could tolerate but a life that my father would find acceptable.
“Yes,” I said, “to farm. I want to follow in Grandfather’s footsteps and manage an estate.”
He thought about this for a moment. “Are you sure that’s what you really want?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I suppose Penhale Manor would provide you with a satisfactory training ground, and then later you can move on to a more challenging situation.”
I thought it wiser not to say that once I got back to Gower no one on earth was ever going to dig me out of it again. I kept quiet.
“Farm management could certainly provide you with an interesting career,” said my father, warming to the idea. “I often fancied it myself in the past and I’d have taken a more active interest in your mother’s Herefordshire lands if I hadn’t been so reluctant to leave Bronwen on her own at the Manor.” He fell silent, although whether this was because he had jolted himself by mentioning Bronwen’s name or because he was remembering how much he had fancied estate management in the past, it was impossible to tell. “Very well,” he said rousing himself, “I’ll give you a five-year nominal lease on the Manor, on the assumption that at the end of that time, when you’re trained and experienced, you move to Herefordshire to manage your mother’s farms there. I think that would be a very tolerable solution to your problems.”
After I had finished thanking him I put my hand impulsively on his arm. “Father … I know you’re not happy here. Come back with me to Penhale.”
He stared. For a moment he was too astonished to speak. Then he shook off my arm, said crisply, “What an extraordinary suggestion” and walked away.
Now it was my turn to stare. “You mean you’re determined to stay here?”
“Of course.” He reached the window and stood watching the rain outside.
“But why? Why?”
“Oh, I could never leave Constance and Francesca a second time,” said my father. “I draw the line.”
It took me a moment to control myself because every instinct I had was screaming against such a decision. “But Father, never mind Constance and Francesca—what about you? What about your life? What about your happiness?”
“My life wouldn’t be worth living if I left them—I’d never survive the guilt. And as for my happiness, how could I be happy in the hell my guilt would create for me? Anyway, I’m not unhappy at the moment—I’m just leading a life in which happiness, isn’t particularly important. A satisfactory life isn’t dependent on sheer happiness alone, thank God. I’m doing valuable work for the Armstrong charities. I’m looking after my wife and child who depend on me emotionally. I’m leading a civilized, reasonably interesting, not unrewarding life, and considering all the suffering I’ve caused in the past I think that’s more than I have a right to expect.”
I saw that locked up in his nineteenth-century metaphysical illusions he was unapproachable. If his peculiar fear of sin and guilt was driving him into martyrdom I was powerless to intervene.
“I see,” I said politely.
“Well, I should bloody well hope you do,” said my father, “since what we’re really talking about here is the difference between right and wrong.”
“Of course,” I said at once. “Don’t worry, Father, I do understand. You’re staying on here because it’s the right thing—indeed, the only thing—to do.”
But what a catastrophe.
VIII
At that time, the summer of ’38, Penhale Manor itself was vacant, a fact that had no doubt stimulated my old longing to go home. The vacancy was the result of Oswald Stourham’s death that spring; he had left Stourham Hall to Eleanor, who had been living at Penhale Manor with Thomas since their marriage in 1934, and for Thomas this bequest represented his elevation to the landed gentry after his years as a younger son living in houses provided by his indulgent brother. In fact there was little land at Stourham Hall but Thomas was hardly idle; in addition to supervising his pig farm, which he transferred from Penhale Manor, he was still in charge of running the Godwin estates in Gower, and even if I were to whip away my father’s lands the likelihood remained that Thomas would be running Oxmoon indefinitely. Of course no one seriously thought poor old Kester would ever be able to manage his property himself.
My father had two farms in Gower, the Home Farm of Penhale Manor and the Martinscombe sheep farm beneath Penhale Down. Both farmhouses were assigned to foremen who reported to Thomas. Bronwen’s brother-in-law Huw Meredith had moved north to the Lleyn Peninsula after her departure, and so the foreman at the Home Farm was a stranger to me. So was the foreman at Martinscombe, bu
t that didn’t concern me since my father declared that the Penhale Manor estate would be quite enough for me to cope with at the start of my new career. The bungalow Little Oxmoon, which stood on the Martinscombe lands, also belonged to my father but had been allotted to Aunt Celia back in 1934 after her husband ran off with a Hungarian.
I prepared to return to Penhale.
Did I think of Bella while I was making my preparations? Yes. I thought I would at last have the chance to assuage my guilt by telling her how sorry I was for what had happened. Did the thought of Bella influence me in my decision to return to Gower? No. It was now five years since our pathetic childhood love affair, and I had quite accepted that she belonged entirely to the past. I had had other girls by that time; I had other sexual memories to recall. It was true no memory could match the poignancy of those summer days in 1933, but that was beside the point. Nostalgia would get me nowhere. I had to look ahead, not back. I had to move on.
I wanted to move to the Manor immediately but my father refused to allow it. In his Victorian mind a young man couldn’t expect to escape unpunished after being sent down from Oxford, so he cut off my allowance for three months, a gesture that was the equivalent of jailing me at Eaton Walk. However when he suspected I might be enjoying myself playing the piano for hours while he was out, he found me a clerical job at the headquarters of Armstrong Investments and I had to waste endless sunny days addressing envelopes for circulars appealing for money on behalf of the Armstrong charities.
Meanwhile, as I toiled away at my office desk in secret and sordid disgrace, poor old Kester, poor old sod, who I had always assumed was incapable of a wet dream, was staging a glorious elopement well worthy of Hollywood at its sloppiest. I could almost hear the soaring violins as he walked away into the golden sunset with that nice intelligent little girlfriend of his who was so very much too good for him. The one redeeming feature of the situation was that at least someone other than me would now receive the full blast of my father’s disapproval, and this comforting prospect enabled me to go on addressing envelopes with tranquillity while I waited for my father to annihilate him.
But the annihilation never happened. Poor feeble old Kester had somehow trounced my formidable father and gone walking on into the golden sunset. What was more, my father even came back impressed from the confrontation at Gretna Green. I couldn’t believe it. Then when I did believe it, I didn’t like it. In fact, to be frank, I hated it.
“I’ve underestimated that boy,” said my father. “I think he may well turn out to be the most remarkable young man. How well he argued his case! He even reminded me of Robert.”
Uncle Robert was the family hero. With his story enshrined in myth and his memory bathed in a perpetual glowing light, his name was synonymous with colossal success in life and superhuman courage in adversity. To say that Kester recalled a memory of Robert was the highest compliment my father could ever pay his nephew. I felt as if a knife were revolving in my gut; somehow I managed to say casually, “Good for Kester—I hope he lives happily ever after,” but it was no good. I couldn’t resist adding: “Of course I wouldn’t be seen dead at the altar before I was twenty-five.”
Famous last words.
Six weeks later Aunt Ginevra died at Oxmoon and we all gathered for her memorial service at Penhale. The church was full. I was with the rest of the family in the front pews, but as we all stood for the first hymn I looked over my shoulder at the pews across the aisle and the next moment I saw Bella, sullen and luscious, looking back.
IX
She at once buried her nose in her hymnbook and looked more sullen than ever. I realized then that the child I had known and perhaps loved in my own childish way had gone forever and was never going to come back. All the women I had loved had gone away and never come back: my mother, my old nanny, Bronwen—and now Bella, replaced by this unknown young woman of eighteen who was obviously determined not to acknowledge my existence.
As the clergyman droned on I felt my anger towards women surfacing, the anger that had prompted me to play around at Oxford without caring whom I hurt. I had had no affairs, just a string of incidents. To have affairs was impossible because I knew I had to leave a woman before she could leave me. The alternative was to risk suffering a pain I was no longer prepared to endure.
So I turned my back on Bella, who was clearly so determined to abandon me, and told myself that even if she had shown interest I would have rejected her. But the rest of the service still passed in a haze of misery.
There was to be a family lunch afterwards at Oxmoon before Kester departed for Ireland with his brothers, but outside the church I heard Eleanor say to Anna, “I’m afraid Bella’s feeling frightful—will you excuse her if she goes straight home?”
I tried to slip past but directly ahead of me Thomas had paused beside his wife. I turned aside—and there I was, face to face with Bella again, and my father no more than a pace behind me with Constance.
Speech was impossible. I tried to say hullo, but nothing happened. Bella stared furiously at the nearest tombstone. Around us, people chatted in muted voices of inanities.
“Hullo, Bella,” said my father politely.
She didn’t answer but tugged her brother-in-law’s hand. “Thomas, take me home.”
“All right, old girl,” said Thomas kindly enough, and they moved away together through the crowd.
“What a very rude unattractive girl,” said Constance disapprovingly. “I feel sorry for Thomas and Eleanor having to give her a home.”
We all went to Oxmoon for lunch. Damned Kester sat in our grandfather’s great carved chair and gave a gala performance as master of Oxmoon—dry eyes, stiff upper lip, the lot. In fact, he was positively glittering in his role of the perfect Godwin of all time. Why had I never realized that Kester looked like Uncle Robert? He had those same pale clever eyes and that fine-drawn jawline which somehow, by a trick of the bone structure, gave an impression not of delicacy but of strength. Of course he was still plain as a pikestaff with that large nose and womanish hair, but all the same … plain people can be striking. I felt too dark, as saturnine as a stage villain, and profoundly unattractive. When we all stood up at the end of the meal I was very conscious that he had wound up taller than I was. I’m five feet eleven. Of course I tell everyone I’m six feet. Kester was six feet. He might even have been six feet one. In fact that day I even wondered if he could be six feet two.
I couldn’t stand it. I got out of the house, cut across the lawn and plunged into the woods. The jackdaws in the ruined tower were still saying “caw-caw,” and I still knew that what they were really saying was “dispossessed, dispossessed.” I thought: I have been here before—miserable, alone and in retreat.
I walked on. I could have stopped, but I went on. I left the grounds by the door in the wall, crossed the road and set off across the heather to Sweyn’s Houses. There were no wild ponies browsing nearby this time, but the sky was just as blue and the light wind still had that faint tang of salt from the sea.
I reached the summit of the ridge and there on top of Rhossili Downs I saw the dazzling view exactly as it had been five years before, the waves streaming languidly over the golden sands, the sea a glittering hypnotic blue, the Shipway about to sink beneath a wide arc of white foam.
I looked along the ridge but there was no one in sight; history never really repeats itself. Finding the fuck rock I stood looking at it. I smiled as I remembered how we had shaken hands politely after our first encounter, not knowing how else to confirm our new friendship, and suddenly I was touched by our extreme innocence. I sat down on the rock as if I could no longer remain upright beneath the weight of my memories, and it was directly after this, as I looked once more along the ridge, that I saw her running towards me from Llangennith.
I leaped to my feet. She never stopped but she waved. I ran and ran and she ran and ran too; she ran all the way into my outstretched arms.
“You came back,” she said, tears streaming down her
face. “You went away—but you came back.”
I took her in my arms and promised her I’d never go away again.
X
“Oh Harry, it was so awful, I was so unhappy and so frightened, I can’t tell you how frightened I was, and Aunt was beastly, beastly—”
“Shhh. Don’t think about it. Just don’t think.”
“I can’t help it. I have nightmares—”
“So do I. What was the baby like?”
“I never saw her. That was awful too. In fact that was the most awful thing of all. They gave me an injection because I was screaming so much, and when I came round it was over and she’d been taken away. I wanted to see her but they said in the circumstances it was better not and anyway she was ill and then she died and I still wanted to see her but they said no, it would only upset me more. I asked, I begged, I screamed, I wept, but they said I might get emotionally disturbed, it was better not, and now I get these nightmares when I’m looking and looking for her and digging up cemeteries—”
“We’ll have another baby. We’ll get married and have another. I’ll put everything right.”
Shoving aside her cigarette, she stubbed it out in the earth beneath the short grass and burrowed blindly into my arms. A muffled childlike voice said, “You don’t have to. I don’t want you to do it just to make it up to me.”
“I want to.”
We were sitting on the fuck rock. Below us the holidaymakers, scattered dots on the vast beach, were enjoying the rarity of a perfect summer day. Away to our right a party of people on horseback were moving towards us along the top of the Downs, and beyond them we could see hikers and a child flying a kite. The sea gulls soared in the wind currents. The surf murmured in our ears, and beyond the cliffs at Rhossili the Worm’s Head was cut off once more by the white water as the Shipway went under.
The Wheel of Fortune Page 100