The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “I want to make love to you,” I said.

  “Fuck, you mean?” she said doubtfully, and at once she became the child of thirteen again to whom fuck was just another four-letter word like skip or jump without any offensive connotations. “Oh, Harry, I couldn’t, not without being married. I’d be too afraid of it all happening again.”

  “That’s exactly why I said ‘I want to’ instead of ‘I’m going to.’ ” I had a quick think. I had brought no sheaths with me to Gower; one hardly sets off for one’s aunt’s memorial service armed to the teeth with contraceptives. There was now a chemist in Penhale, but if I went there to buy what I needed the whole village would know in less than an hour that Harry Godwin was up to no good. I wondered wildly if my father used contraceptives but thought it unlikely. A family rumor had long been in circulation that Constance was anxious for another child.

  I groaned in frustration. Bella looked anxious. I explained the problem to her.

  “Maybe Thomas has some!” was her bright response. “Bobby’s nearly two now and Eleanor hasn’t got pregnant again.”

  That settled that. I jumped up. “Come on, we’re off to Stourham Hall!”

  We dashed off hand in hand along the path, both of us laughing, and suddenly the world seemed dazzling to me and I knew what it was to be happy. Stourham Hall lay about a mile away where the Downs sloped to the sand burrows. We sneaked into the house by a side door. Thomas and Eleanor might still be out but there was always the danger of a wandering servant.

  “Supposing Thomas and Eleanor come back?”

  “No, I’d say we have at least two hours—they’ll wait to see off Kester and Co. who are leaving for Ireland. I heard Thomas mention that to my father this morning.”

  We invaded the marital chamber. It was a plain, no-nonsense room large enough to swallow up several vast pieces of Victorian furniture. There was a good view of the sea beyond the burrows.

  “Lord, I hope we’re right about this!” I muttered. “It’d be just our luck if he went in for coitus interruptus instead.”

  “What’s that? If it’s awful I bet he’d do it. He’s so peculiar.”

  I was too busy hunting to give this remark the attention it deserved. The drawer of the bedside table was empty. I ransacked Eleanor’s dressing table. Bella looked under the mattress. We were giggling all the time.

  “Oh heavens, Harry, supposing we don’t find any? I’ll burst with frustration—I’m wild for it!”

  “Wild? I’m berserk.” I ripped open the door of the wardrobe and saw a dressing gown. There was a bulge in the pocket. “Eureka!” I shouted.

  “Oh, thank God!”

  We rushed to her bedroom, locked the door and hurtled into each other’s arms.

  XI

  “I called the baby Melody,” said Bella, “because I knew you were so fond of music. But beastly old Aunt said it wasn’t Christian and she told them to put Jane on the birth certificate. There had to be a birth certificate because the baby did live a few hours. Aunt had your name put on it as the father. She said she did it to relieve her feelings but it wouldn’t matter because no one we knew was ever going to go hunting in the birth records at Geneva. Oh, Aunt was cruel to me, so cruel and hard and cold—”

  “Shhh.” I began to make love to her again to blot out all the terrible memories. Vaguely I wondered what Thomas would think when he found not one but two of his sheaths were missing, but perhaps he wasn’t the kind of man who always knew how many he had in reserve. All I could do was wish him a touch of amnesia.

  Bella was only approximately the same shape as she had been at thirteen because now there was more of her, and the additional weight was so strikingly distributed that within seconds of ejaculation, or so it seemed, I was once more in a state of chronic sexual excitement. She had long lissom legs, slim hips, a narrow waist and a bosom that had to be seen to be believed. I saw it and still didn’t believe it. With perfect truth I told her she was the sexiest girl I had ever seen in my life.

  “How many have you seen?” she said jealously at once.

  I saw no point in lying about this. “Well, of course I had a few girls up at Oxford—I thought I was never going to see you again. But they didn’t mean anything. They were just good for a quick fuck.”

  “Lucky old you. I wouldn’t have minded some quick fucks, but I was too frightened, and anyway there was no one to fuck. Aunt watched me like a jailer too. Oh, the relief when Daddy died! He left me money, you know, so I thought I’d be able to get away at last, but the money’s all tied up till I’m twenty-five so here I am, still stuck with Eleanor and Thomas—and oh God, he’s so peculiar!”

  This time I took notice. “In what way?”

  “He gives me peculiar looks.”

  I sat bolt upright in bed. “My God, are you trying to tell me—”

  “Oh no, he’s crazy about Eleanor; in fact he’s keener on her than she is on him. It was the other way around before they were married, but—”

  “Then what are you trying to say?”

  “I think he amuses himself by imagining all sorts of peculiar things he’d like to do to me—only of course he never would because he’s so mad about Eleanor.”

  I sagged back appalled on the pillows. “When did all this begin?”

  “Oh, about a month after they started living here this spring. I couldn’t sleep one night so I set off for the kitchens to make myself some tea, and I was just passing their bedroom door when I heard them snorting around like a couple of pigs so I stopped to listen, I don’t know why, maybe because I’ve never been able to imagine Eleanor doing it. Anyway, suddenly a mouse ran over my foot and I screamed and a moment later Thomas came charging out and yelled that if ever I listened at the door again he’d beat me—well, he just said that, he didn’t mean it, it was just a way of letting off steam, and then suddenly he looked at me as if he were thinking, ‘Hullo, that’s an interesting idea—’ ”

  “I could kill him.”

  “Oh, it was all right! He just went bright red, returned to the bedroom and slammed the door in my face. And of course he’s never done anything since. But whenever he and I are alone together now I sort of feel he’s thinking what fun it would be to spank me—”

  “I’m getting you out of this house. We’ll get married at once.”

  “Oh yes, let’s get married as soon as possible, but don’t worry, Harry. He loves Eleanor, I know he does—”

  “Yes, but you’ve got something Eleanor doesn’t have. Maybe he has trouble getting it up with her. Maybe whenever he sees you he has an erection hard enough to bore through a steel plate. Maybe—”

  But Bella was now rocking with mirth. “Imagine Thomas drilling through a steel plate with his—”

  “God knows I could drill through a steel girder with mine,” I said, grabbing her, and reached for the last sheath. Thomas was really going to be caught short. I pictured him casting around for a thieving housemaid with a passion for contraceptives.

  “Oh God, that was heaven!” gasped Bella afterwards. “How soon did you say we could be married?”

  “I don’t know but I’ll get a special license,” I said, and then remembered I hadn’t a penny in the world. The thought was the equivalent of a dozen cold showers. I felt very young suddenly, very nervous. I was still some months short of my twentieth birthday.

  “I’ll talk to my father as soon as I get back,” I said casually, sweating with dread at the prospect, and ten minutes later I set off for Oxmoon.

  XII

  “I absolutely forbid it!” said my father, white with rage. No six cows in a field this time and no dead antiques on a beige carpet either. I was being granted a private audience in the morning room at Oxmoon, a little-used corner of the house which still bore witness to my grandparents’ forty-year love affair with junk shops. In my grandfather’s day every square inch of the mantelshelf had been crammed with bric-à-brac, but Aunt Ginevra had managed to reduce this to an Edwardian coronation mug flanked by a pai
r of handsome brass candlesticks.

  Keeping my eyes steadily fixed on the coronation mug I said steadily, “Kester’s ten months younger than I am. If he can get married, why can’t I?” My heart was slamming around like a demented hammer. Icy sweat welded my shirt to my spine.

  “Kester can afford a wife!” shouted my father. “He’s master of Oxmoon!”

  “Yes!” I shouted back. “He’s master of Oxmoon! He’s master because you were too bloody busy doing the done thing to think what that would mean to me!” I had never consciously formed that thought in my mind before, and once the words were spoken I was horrified. I stammered, “I—I didn’t mean that—I—” but the next moment my attempt at an apology was brutally terminated as he struck me hard across the mouth.

  I reeled backwards, tripped against the sofa and on my way to the floor bashed into a little sewing table which at once disintegrated. My mind was paralyzed with shock. My father had very occasionally given me a reluctant whack on the bottom when I’d been at my naughtiest as a small child, but he had never struck me like that before.

  “Get up.”

  I crawled to my feet. But I couldn’t raise my eyes to his face. I couldn’t even look at the coronation mug. I looked at the brass fender around the fireplace but saw only six cows standing in a field.

  “Now just you listen to me. There were reasons, good reasons, why my father felt obliged to leave Oxmoon to Kester and reasons, good reasons, why I chose not to interfere. My father did what he felt he had to do. Robert did what he felt he had to do. And I did what I felt I had to do. So what you’ve got to understand and accept is that this situation could not have been otherwise. It’s ridiculous to suggest I acted out of some heroic and self-sacrificing desire to do the done thing. I’m no hero. I acted under compulsion. I acted because I felt it would destroy me if I acted in any other way. Now stop behaving like some overgrown spoiled child and never let me hear you refer to the subject again.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

  “I know you’ve always been jealous of Kester. But it’s about time you grew up, Harry. You seem to think you can get away with anything just because you’ve always been my favorite, but my patience is now wearing very thin and I suggest you start to do some very hard thinking. You’re not the only pebble on the beach, you know. I do have three sons in Canada.”

  I wondered where my next breath was coming from. All the air seemed to have been permanently removed from my lungs. Three sons in Canada, he had said. I got my lungs working again, God knows how, but I found I could breathe only in shallow gasps. Three sons in Canada. I licked my lips. There was blood on them from his blow on the mouth. I tried to speak but nothing happened.

  “You come here to me,” said my father, still in a towering rage, “when you know perfectly well I’m shocked and grieved by Ginevra’s death, and you have the supreme insolence to demand I should finance a marriage which no father in his right mind could possibly approve of—”

  “I’m sorry, sir, of course I can see now that I’ve approached this in quite the wrong way.” What an understatement. Why on earth had I made that catastrophic remark about Oxmoon? I’d behaved like a lunatic. “Sir, if you’d just let me explain how I feel about Bella—”

  “Explain! I’m not interested in the puerile explanations dreamed up by an immature adolescent in order to excuse a ludicrous fantasy! You want to marry her out of guilt! What could be more obvious?”

  “No, there’s more to it than that, sir—I really do love her, I swear it—”

  “Love! What do you know about love? You stand there, nineteen years old, and think that just because you seized the opportunity to misbehave at Oxford you know bloody well all there is to know—”

  “Well, at least I’m not a virgin as Kester obviously was when he got married!” There I went again. Certifiable. Oh God, how on earth was I going to get out of this scene in one piece—

  “You should try and take a leaf out of Kester’s book instead of mocking him the whole damn time!” said my father furiously. “He’s known Anna for three years. I still disapprove of him marrying when he’s so young, but at least I think he’s got a better chance of happiness than most people who are deluded enough to marry in their teens. But you! You see that girl today for the first time in five years and on the strength of one meeting you have the colossal nerve to start talking of marriage—”

  “Well, it was quite a meeting!” I was now too demented to care what I said.

  “Oh, no doubt!” shouted my father. “She’s got no brains, no manners, no charm, no intellectual interests, nothing which could make her worthy to be the wife of a young man of your potential, but one thing she does have and that’s the one thing you’ll be tired of in six months! My dear Harry, if you think that guilt and sex are any foundation whatsoever for a successful marriage, you’re being even more foolish than I thought!”

  “Well, what about your marriage?” I yelled at him. “Are you trying to tell me that’s not based on sex and guilt? You’ve no right to preach to me!” And sinking down on the sofa before he could hit me again I covered my face with my hands.

  There was a long silence but when I dared look at him I saw his anger had been spent. He was leaning against the mantelshelf as if he hardly knew how to remain upright, and at once I struggled to my feet; I could endure his rage but not his despair.

  “Father, it’s not as you think, I really do love her, if it was just sex and guilt I wouldn’t want to marry her but I do want to marry her, I must, we want to have another baby and so of course we must get married, I mean, it’s just no good, is it, having babies without being married—”

  He held up his hand and I was silent. Very slowly he sat down. He moved as if all his joints ached. He was gray with exhaustion. All he said in the end was “How glad I am that I don’t believe in a life after death. I couldn’t bear to believe Blanche knew what a mess I’ve made of bringing up her children.”

  “I—”

  “Shut up. There’s no comment you can make to that statement. Let me think for a moment.” He went on sitting in the chair, his elbows on his knees, his eyes watching his clasped hands, but at length he straightened his back and stood up. “If I refuse my consent now,” he said, “I’ll only have to give way later. You’ll get her pregnant again—deliberately this time—because you know I’d never let a grandchild be born illegitimate. Then we’d have all the scandal of a child arriving seven months after the wedding, and I couldn’t take that again, not after what I went through with Marian.” He paused to consider further. He was calm now, detached. It was as if he were viewing the situation from a great distance.

  “Very well,” he said finally. “I will consent. But you must compromise with me. I can’t have you marrying immediately by special license. I must insist for your own sake that you wait until Christmas, and I also insist that you don’t announce your engagement for another two months. That means that if you do change your mind you’ll find it easier to get out of this mess—and I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I do think it’s a mess. However perhaps you’ll do better the next time. Naturally this marriage is bound to end in divorce. I give it five years at the most, no more. In fact,” said my father, suddenly becoming angry again, “I can’t stress too strongly that I think this decision of yours is absolutely wrong from start to finish.”

  But I knew that on the contrary, it was the right thing—indeed the only thing—to do.

  3

  I

  TEN MONTHS AFTER THIS major row with my father I was walking back in the dark from Oxmoon to Penhale and thinking what a relief it was that poor old Kester, poor old sod, had messed up his relationship with my father as thoroughly as I had messed up mine. Those bills! Incredible. But at least he still had his fairytale palace of a house. And what did I have? Damn all.

  I’d have liked to turn Penhale Manor into the perfect house but I had no money. When I took over the estate my father had worked out how much capital e
xpenditure the farm would require during the next twelve months and had added an extra thousand pounds to launch me on my married life. Every single penny of this sum was to be deducted from the twenty thousand pounds of my mother’s money that I was due to inherit at twenty-one. My mother had left no will, and all her disposable fortune had wound up in my father’s hands during her lifetime, but under the terms of her marriage settlement a portion had been kept in trust for her children.

  My father refused to advance me the whole amount of my portion. “It won’t do you any harm,” he said, exercising his Victorian streak, “to struggle for a few months.” This was bad news. I was quite prepared to slave at the estate, but the fact was that I was not only a novice at farming, which requires a high degree of experience and flair, but a novice at running my own life. One moment I was little more than a schoolboy living on my father’s charity and the next I had an estate to run, a wife to keep, a new baby on the way and all manner of expenses which I hadn’t anticipated. I knew moments of panic when I felt my life had slipped out of control, but all I could do was beat them back and struggle on.

  Somehow I stomached the necessary instruction from Thomas and somehow I maintained a humble respectful attitude towards him so that I could always go to him for help whenever I was desperate. I was desperate very often, particularly in the early days of my new career. I didn’t get on with the foreman at the Home Farm who clearly thought I was just a spoiled rich brat taking up farming for fun. He respected Thomas, who had put the fear of God into him from the start, but I knew I was too young and too inexperienced ever to win his approval. He’d have to go, I realized that, but how would I manage when he left? Besides, Thomas would probably write me off as a headstrong fool if I immediately sacked my foreman, and I had to keep on the good side of Thomas because my survival depended on it.