The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  This one was tiring. It was pink, bald and aggressive with powerful lungs. Bella soon got over her disappointment that the baby wasn’t a girl and within hours was telling me joyfully that it was really much better that we started off with a son and heir. I agreed. I had found this hankering to replace Melody both morbid and embarrassing, so I was delighted to have a baby who couldn’t merely be written off as a replacement. In fact I was so delighted with this tangible evidence of my successful relationship with my wife that I spent much time drinking champagne and distributing largesse among the servants.

  Bella said he had to be called Henry after me, and fancying the idea of a namesake I agreed. But I loathe the name Henry. I’m not keen on Harry either, but at least it’s livelier. “Henry Godwin” sounds like an antiquarian bachelor who keeps cats. At least “Harry Godwin” sounds like a man capable of satisfying the sexiest girl in Gower.

  “But we can’t call him Harry!” said Bella. “It would be much too confusing. I know, let’s call him Hal! He’s so tough that he deserves a tough name to match.”

  What extraordinary ideas women have. I looked down at this human scrap less than two feet long and wondered if I had ever seen anything so weak and helpless in all my life. However I liked the idea of little Hal. I liked the idea that I would leave a replica behind me in case I—but no, I really couldn’t start thinking about getting killed. That would be the last word in neurotic cowardice.

  Two weeks later I was summoned to my training camp in North Wales. I embraced Bella, took Hal’s little hand for a moment between my thumb and forefinger and then set out along the road to bloody heroism.

  What an escape from a full range of problems I had no idea how to solve!

  What a life … and what a mess.

  V

  The massive upheaval caused by the war resulted in a realignment of the Godwin family. It was as if someone had shaken a giant kaleidoscope to form a new pattern, and the first innovation came when Uncle Edmund, egged on by my father, left London accompanied by Aunt Teddy with the intention of spending the war in the Gower Peninsula. Naturally they would have preferred to withdraw to their estate in Kent, but this was soon requisitioned by the government because of its useful proximity to London, and once my father realized Teddy was determined to leave the capital before the bombing started, he suggested they lived at Oxmoon. Kester liked them; my father thought Edmund could dole out paternal sympathy while acting as a buffer state between his nephew and Thomas who at that time was unsure if he could batter his way into the army.

  Everyone thought this plan was an excellent idea but then it occurred to my father that my need was greater than Kester’s. I was soon due to leave; Thomas had agreed to look after the estate for me, but his future in Gower was uncertain; Bella couldn’t cope with anything except pregnancy and her trashy fashion magazines. All this meant that Penhale Manor was ripe for an invasion by a man like Edmund, who had once supervised the estate for my father, and a woman like Teddy, who could supervise anything within reach.

  They arrived on my doorstep. I was relieved but also uneasy; Edmund was not a man I knew well. Since he was married to Constance’s sister I had seen almost nothing of him while my father had been living with Bronwen, and even later I had seldom had the chance of conversing with him on his own. He seemed to be one of those sunny-natured fools so prevalent among the English upper classes, but I was aware that my father thought Edmund could keep a conscientious eye on my estate so I was prepared to believe he had more brain than was apparent.

  I was even more cautious about Teddy. I could remember her being very cold to my father when he had lived apart from Constance, and I was inclined to take her artificial manner at face value. Both she and Constance were much younger than my father and Edmund, who were in their mid-forties. Teddy was thirty-four, smart, loquacious and foreign. Unlike Constance, who had acquired a painstaking English accent over the years, Teddy had carefully preserved her Americanisms and even exaggerated them so that she often sounded more American than the Americans. I think she believed the English found this “cute.” Or maybe she just found it easier to live in England as a foreigner; the English tend to be benign towards English-speaking foreigners and more willing to excuse any un-English behavior.

  Edmund and Teddy had two boys but they were now both at Harrow and away for most of the year. Richard was fifteen, Geoffrey two years younger. They were both good at games and thought Harrow was wonderful. I suspected that Geoffrey was shrewd although he never said much. No opportunity. Whenever Teddy wasn’t chatting away that great oaf Richard, who had the brains of a flea, was talking rubbish and roaring with laughter. He was so ingenuous that it was impossible to dislike him but I did find him very tiring.

  However Richard was hardly my problem at that time, and meanwhile his parents were busy being my salvation. Teddy took one look at the house, one look at Bella, one look at the newly arrived baby and said, “Okay, honey, leave this to me.” I left it, but not before Teddy had added: “Harry darling, I keep getting these checks that I don’t know what to do with now that I’m not in London—why don’t Bella and I have a wonderful time while you’re away and spruce up this heavenly old home of yours?”

  “Well, that’s most kind of you, Teddy, but—”

  “Now, don’t go all British on me!” said Teddy masterfully. “Edmund and I are about to take over your home so the least we can do is spend money on it. Why not? Hell, we may all be dead soon anyway so why not spend a little money before we go?”

  I began to realize that this was a woman with a strong warm generous personality. It also occurred to me that if she wanted to offer strength, warmth and generosity on a gargantuan scale, I’d be a fool to refuse.

  “I’m such a villain, Teddy, that I’m not going to argue with you—thank you very much.”

  Teddy beamed up at me. “Why, it takes a real man to accept a gift gracefully like that—honey, I just couldn’t admire you more!”

  Dimly I began to understand why Edmund, kept for years by this rich strong-willed wife, had remained so thoroughly happy and normal.

  “Teddy’s wonderful!” sighed Bella, just before my departure. “She’s the nicest woman I’ve ever met!”

  This represented another victory for Teddy. Bella hated new acquaintances. I knew her well enough now to realize that this was because she thought people believed her to be ugly and stupid, but I had never succeeded in convincing her she should have a better opinion of herself. It was Teddy who finally managed to boost her self-esteem.

  “Teddy says what a marvelous figure I have,” Bella said when I came home on leave. “Teddy says I could stop the entire German army dead in its tracks.”

  “Let’s hope you’ll never have to,” I said, but she hardly heard me. She was bursting to tell me more about her heroine.

  “Teddy asked me about my mother, and when I said all I really knew about her was that she was a platinum blonde Teddy said, ‘A platinum blonde? Whew! What a gal she must have been!’ and it was so wonderful when she said that because everyone’s always behaved as if having platinum-blond hair was the last word in awfulness. And do you know what Teddy said next? She said that maybe my mother was acting in my best interests when she left me behind at Stourham Hall. She said perhaps it was a great big noble unselfish gesture to ensure that I was brought up in a wealthy comfortable home, and suddenly everything seemed quite different to me, I was able to think perhaps my mother had loved me after all. … Teddy said that if she’d had a daughter she’d have done anything to ensure her happiness—it’s sad, isn’t it that Teddy doesn’t have a daughter, but she couldn’t have more children after Geoffrey was born. I feel so sorry for her.”

  But I didn’t feel sorry for Teddy. I clearly saw she’d found that daughter she wanted after all.

  “Bella, for God’s sake don’t tell her about Melody.”

  “Oh, of course not! How could I tell her that I was so wicked when I was only thirteen? She might turn against
me and not like me anymore. … Oh, Harry, Teddy says I’m a wonderful mother because I like to spend so much time with Hal. … Can we have another baby straightaway?”

  “Why not?” I was so pleased to see her enjoying life, and besides I had decided it would be sensible to keep her occupied when I was away for weeks on end. I knew she loved me but when a man has a sexy wife it pays him to be thoroughly realistic.

  We conceived Charles who was born in the November of 1940.

  “Teddy says I’m a success!” said Bella starry-eyed when she told me Charles was on the way. “She says I’m glamorous and I’ve got this sexy husband and a beautiful baby and another baby due before the end of the year—and all before I’m twenty-one! She says many women spend their whole lives never getting that far!”

  I did occasionally wonder where all this was going to end but came to the conclusion that I could see nothing but good in the situation. My house, refurbished with exquisite taste, was neat as a pin and ran like clockwork. Bella, more luscious than ever, looked like a Hollywood actress on the brink of stardom while in the nursery a little boy with blond hair and a pink-and-white skin and black eyes smiled at me and uttered a couple of syllables which Bella assured me were “Daddy.” I decided fatherhood was definitely a desirable occupation. After years of private failures I savored my public success in reproducing myself to perfection.

  Meanwhile up at Oxmoon poor old Kester, poor old sod, hadn’t managed to father anything. Very sad. I went out of my way to be especially kind to him at the christenings.

  “Oh, do let’s have another baby, Harry!” said Bella when Charles was a few months old. “After two boys we’re bound to have a girl next time!”

  We conceived Jack who was born in the December of 1941.

  Three sons in rapid succession. Not bad. In fact I could almost hear Kester gnashing his teeth, although he always wrote the most charming letters congratulating me. However there was no doubt Kester was having a frustrating time. He had wanted to drive an ambulance for the Red Cross—typical Kester, pining to dramatize his pacifism by picking one of the most heroic jobs available—but he had been told to stay at home. At first there was talk of Oxmoon being requisitioned but just as Kester and Anna were preparing to withdraw to Little Oxmoon, which had fallen vacant after Aunt Celia’s recent death; the government changed its mind and decided that it would be more rational to keep Kester in his own home with his nose to the grindstone; he was told that it was his patriotic duty as a certified pacifist to buckle down to the job of running his estate himself with the aid of government advisers who drew up plans for food production. Edmund also found himself in the hands of these agricultural experts with the result that he and Kester, pooling their resources, gave each other both practical and moral support. That took care of the Godwin estates in Gower. As for Thomas, he finally blitzed himself into the army and was exported to Northern Ireland to be trained. Eleanor ran the Stourham Hall pig farm single-handed in his absence.

  “It’s ironic how things turn out,” said my father later when he expressed his restored confidence in his nephew by authorizing the winding up of the trust that had been supervising Oxmoon’s affairs since the debacle of 1939, “but I think war may well be the making of Kester. He needed a powerful incentive like this to set his writing aside and apply himself to the estate. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did very well—and I must say I do admire him for having the courage to stand up for those pacifist principles of his.”

  So Kester was going to wind up a hero after all. Meanwhile I’d spent many months sitting on my bottom in various military dumps waiting for an invasion which never came. It was too much. My patience, like Hitler’s, was exhausted, and shortly after that conversation with my father I made up my mind to volunteer for the commandos.

  VI

  My war was divided into two parts. The first part, which lasted until the September of 1942, was spent in excruciating boredom but complete safety. The second part was spent in circumstances where words like “boredom” and “safety” described unimaginable states of mind in a lost civilization. Of course I did realize, as I was yawning my way through the first half of the war, that I was very lucky. I avoided being killed in Norway, France, Italy or Greece. I was also able to see my wife to ensure that she was constantly pregnant. I spent most of my time stationed along the south coast of England, and although I was never near Gower I was always less than an hour from London and the main line to Swansea.

  Meanwhile the family kaleidoscope kept shifting. After Aunt Celia died in 1940, her daughter Erika left her husband and disappeared. Long after the war we found she had been recruited as a British spy but had switched sides as soon as she had been parachuted into France. After all, Germany was her native land and she had always been partial to Hitler. Personally I thought her recruitment was a typical British balls-up, but at least it got Erika back to Germany, where she wound up making bullets in a munitions factory. Her husband Ricky Mowbray tried to evade the services but his pacifism was only a synonym for cowardice, and he was eventually drafted into the Pay Corps and lost at sea in the Mediterranean. Erika married a German after the war.

  With both Aunt Celia and Erika wiped off the Gower map, Little Oxmoon became a billet for Canadian soldiers who did their best to wreck everything in sight. Bloody barbarians. Someone once tried to tell me that colonial soldiers were homesick and shouldn’t be judged too harshly. Homesick! How feeble! We British don’t believe in wrecking everything in sight just because we’re homesick. Quite the reverse. We build a little Britain wherever we go and then we never have any problems. No wonder we conquered the earth. We deserved to.

  I’m not usually a rabid patriot but rabid patriotism was a form of survival in those days while Churchill breathed fire over the wireless and Hitler breathed brimstone across the Channel so I soon wound up hating all foreigners except Teddy. As far as I was concerned Teddy was the heroine of Penhale and deserved to be canonized.

  She had recently had a great success in establishing a friendship between Bella and Anna. I was most surprised for they had no interests in common, but they were the same age and I suppose they enjoyed gossiping about trivialities just as all women do. I was used to Bella saying she didn’t like Anna, but I knew that was only because Anna was well read and intelligent and Bella as usual was afraid of being judged stupid. However one day I came back on leave and found Bella saying that Anna was “nice” and “sweet” and “rather fun after all.”

  “This friendship will be very good for both those girls,” pronounced Teddy. “Now, Harry dear, while I’m straightening out this family, why don’t I do something about you and Kester? There you are, both bright intelligent personable guys, and what happens? Whenever you meet you behave as if you’re enduring the worst form of mental torture! Edmund honey, do you understand why your two nephews act like this?”

  “Not in the least, darling. Both jolly nice chaps. Mystery.”

  Since I could refuse Teddy nothing I eventually found myself in the library at Oxmoon with Kester while we drank whisky and wondered what the hell to say to each other. Making a supreme effort we discussed politics and music but then, God help us, we made the mistake of turning to religion. Kester said he and Anna were attending Quaker meetings. I said that was nice. Seconds later Teddy, returning with the girls from a walk in the grounds, found us sunk deep in an exhausted silence.

  “I just don’t understand it!” she said aggrieved. “You two should be such friends!”

  I looked at Kester, and as he looked at me we each saw the double image and the horror that had no name. Teddy continued her efforts to bring us together but it was useless; we both knew our relationship lay far beyond the range of Teddy’s innocent American optimism.

  “Good luck, Harry,” said Kester much later when I left to go overseas, and as he spoke I pictured him safe at home in Gower, spending the war on the home front, once again leading the life I longed for but which seemed always to be beyond my reach.
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br />   “Thanks, old chap,” I said. “I’ll need all the luck I can get. God, I can’t wait to go! Sitting around on my arse in absolute safety isn’t my idea of fun at all!”

  What a gibe. Talk about tempting fate. Oh, I deserved what was coming to me, no doubt about that, and no doubt Kester thought I deserved it too.

  VII

  Before I was dispatched overseas I went to Scotland for special training and there I learned how to survive in very adverse circumstances. I was even taught how to strangle a man as quickly and quietly as possible. That was when I knew the world had gone quite mad and that I was certifiable to have got myself involved in such lunacy. However because I didn’t want my father to worry about me I wrote and said I was having a wonderful time.

  The one advantage of my rigorous training was that I emerged in tip-top physical condition for my final seventy-two-hour leave in Gower, and I was determined to break all kinds of sexual records in order to stop myself thinking about the future. Certainly when I arrived at the station in Swansea and saw Bella waiting for me I started thinking about fucking instead of fighting and that had to rank as an improvement.

  By that time Swansea was wrecked. Swansea was an awful old place, a seaside settlement ruined by the industrial revolution, but in its own tough, bizarrely romantic way it had a vitality which against all the odds rendered it alluring. Perhaps the key to its seductiveness lay in the fact that beyond the seaminess of the industrial port lay the intellectual capital of South Wales. Swansea was a Welsh powerhouse, not just a city of Mammon but a city of the mind. Some of my most cherished early memories consisted of being taken to concerts there by Kester’s tutor and discovering the Welsh passion for music. I might have inherited my musical gifts from an Englishwoman but I was a Welshman, and for me Swansea was Wales with all its virtues and vices, beauty and blemishes, so that whenever I saw Swansea I felt that I’d come home.