The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  The light was on in the hall. Taking a deep breath to clear my head I walked up the steps but before I could ring the bell the front door opened six inches and my ex-serf looked out.

  “Harry, it’s good of you to come, but frankly—”

  “Out of my way.” I was definitely not in the mood to be crossed.

  “Look, he just wants to be alone. He didn’t even want Mom with him. I’m only here, because Dad thought he shouldn’t be entirely on his own.”

  “Fuck off and let me in.”

  “Harry—”

  “Let me in or by Christ I’ll bust the door down!”

  “For God’s sake! You’re not in the commandos now! You can’t force your way into a house that doesn’t belong to you!”

  I kicked open the door and forced my way in. “Kester!” I shouted as Evan was flung back against the wall.

  “Harry—” Evan recovered himself sufficiently to grab my arm. “—you can’t do this, you just can’t do it—”

  “I’ve done it.”

  “But—”

  “I’m justified. I’ve got to tell that poor sod—”

  “Get out of here!” screamed a maniac’s voice from the half-landing of the staircase.

  Both Evan and I jumped and spun to face him.

  My first reaction was an automatic Poor old Kester, deep in melodrama as usual, but as soon as I saw him I realized he was round the bend, and the instant I realized this I understood that this scene was no synthetic melodrama hammed up by actors in their appointed roles but real melodrama, spewed out by real people whose feelings were so violent that they could barely be expressed in words. The effect still smacked of the footlights but everyone seemed curiously under-rehearsed. Real life is inevitably so much messier and less aesthetically pleasing than good art.

  “How dare you come here!” stammered Kester. He was grayish-white, sweating like a pig, his pale eyes stark mad. “How dare you charge into my house as if you owned it!”

  I was still drunk but not so drunk that I failed to realize I’d made a big mistake. I tried to put matters right. “Sorry, old chap, I know I’m pissed but it’s because I’m so bloody upset. I actually came here to—”

  “You came to crow over me! You came to gloat because my wife’s dead and yours is still alive!”

  I was so horrified I couldn’t speak. I just gaped at him as Evan charged past me up the stairs and tried to take control of the situation.

  “It’s okay, Kester, leave him to me—”

  “Out of my way.”

  “Kester—”

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Get out, Harry!” shouted Evan. “Get out!” He was already struggling with Kester on the stairs.

  “For Christ’s sake, Kester,” I said stupefied, “I liked your wife, I admired her, I envied you—”

  “You despised me for not marrying a bloody nymphomaniac and breeding like a rabbit, you despised me for not fighting in the war, you despised me for getting in such a mess in ’39, but I’m not tolerating your contempt anymore, I’m going to wipe you out, I’m going to kill you …”

  I suddenly realized he meant what he said.

  I backed away. Then I began to run. Of course I could have knocked Kester out if I’d allowed him a fight, but one really can’t go around knocking bereaved men senseless. That’s not the done thing at all.

  Would the car start first go? It did. I drove away just as Kester burst out of the front door in pursuit, but my escape was so narrow that when I reached the Manor I was sick into the nearest bush. After that, feeling very very shocked and very very sober, I made myself some black coffee and I was still slumped at the kitchen table an hour later when my father arrived from Swansea.

  II

  “But you must have realized you’d be the last person he’d want to see!”

  “But I was benign. I was benign but he couldn’t see it. He just looked at me and saw horrors.”

  “But my dear Harry—”

  “Father, he’s crazy. He’s stark staring mad. He wants to kill me.”

  “Well, obviously he was thoroughly overwrought and didn’t mean what he said—”

  “Wrong. He meant it. He’s mad as a hatter.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake pull yourself together!” shouted my father who was never at his best when the subject of insanity came up for discussion. “The boy’s merely distracted by shock and grief! Of course he’s not mad!”

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve had a shock, I mean an awful shock, absolutely bloody—”

  “I know, I know, but you must pull yourself together and stop making these absurd statements!”

  “Father, you just haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on here—”

  “Well, whatever’s going on I refuse to admit it’s insanity!” cried my father who sounded manic enough himself by that time: “I won’t have it! I draw the line!”

  So that was that. No insanity. Any possibility of such dangerously unorthodox behavior had been terminated and we were now all officially in a state of compos mentis.

  “What’s going on here,” said my father, somehow managing to speak in a formidably rational voice, “is that there’s been an appalling tragedy and that both you and Kester are in a state of shock. Let me telephone Oxmoon and find out if Gavin Warburton’s still there—it’s obvious that Kester’s not the only man in the parish of Penhale who needs a sedative tonight.”

  “Nonsense, I’ve nerves of steel, I’m tough as old boots. Now, look here, Father, I don’t want to go on and on about this but I don’t think you should turn a blind eye to Kester’s behavior just because you find the subject of insanity distressing. The plain truth is that I’m locked up in the Gower Peninsula with a maniac who wants to kill me, and—”

  “Will you for God’s sake stop talking like a lunatic!”

  “But Father—”

  “All right!” said my father fiercely, somehow getting himself under control again. “All right! You’re locked up in the Gower Peninsula with Kester—but you don’t have to be locked up with him, do you? You know damned well that I’ve got the key that sets you free—what about those lands in Herefordshire!”

  I felt as if I’d just fallen through a trapdoor. Was I now—after all I’d gone through—meekly going to submit to being dispossessed just because Kester had turned himself from a jealous neurotic into a raving lunatic? Not bloody likely! I wasn’t going to let my life be ruined by that sodding freak! Not a chance.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said glibly to my father, “I do apologize for being so melodramatic and emotional—” Just like Kester. Christ! Have to snap out of that one and snap out of it fast. Time to play the Great English Public School Game again. Stiff upper lip. A casual, nonchalant manner. The Done Thing glorified. Every unbreakable rule not only unbroken but buffed to a high luster.

  “Of course you’re quite right,” I said, continuing to speak in a very calm, very soothing voice. “Kester and I are just suffering from shock, that’s all, and actually the truth is I feel desperately sorry for him. What a tragedy! Can’t see how he’s ever going to recover.”

  That was an interesting thought. What happened to estates where the owner went permanently round the bend?

  Oh no, I wasn’t going to be evicted to Herefordshire! Absolutely not! I was going to stick around in Gower to see what happened next. After all, if poor old Kester, poor old sod, wound up certified, all the family would have to rally round to save Oxmoon, and how could I do my bit to help if I were bogged down miles away in Herefordshire? I mean, I had to stay, didn’t I? It was almost my moral duty. In fact, it was my moral duty, I could see that clearly now. It was the right thing—indeed the only thing—to do. …

  Typical, wasn’t it? The story of my life.

  I could have stopped—but I went on.

  III

  The next thing I knew I was toying with the fascinating notion that Kester might commit suicide.

  It was the funeral which gave m
e that idea. Despite Anna’s Quaker leanings she was buried according to the rites of the Jewish faith, and of course Kester couldn’t let the ceremony pass without seizing the opportunity to create awful scenes. I’d never before realized what a bore Hamlet must have been when they tried to bury Ophelia. Naturally I didn’t attend the funeral, but hair-raising reports filtered back to me not from my father, who preserved a humane silence, but from my cousin Elizabeth Bryn-Davies.

  After the funeral the melodrama continued unabated when Kester burned the Oxmoon summerhouse to the ground. I heard later—again from Elizabeth who liked to gossip—that he had made love to Anna there in the back room on the day before her death and he just couldn’t stand to be reminded of this last happy memory of her. I automatically thought, Poor old Kester, poor old sod, but my chief interest in the story lay in the fact that he could get it up. I even wondered for the first time if the marriage had been childless because of some deficiency in Anna.

  The main result of Kester’s arson was that he allowed his brother Declan to lead him away to Dublin where he had a complete nervous breakdown and was confined to a mental hospital. My father got the power of attorney; Thomas got his heart’s desire, reinstatement as the estate’s manager, and I got nothing—as usual—despite my loyal offer to help in the name of family solidarity, but having managed to convince my father that I was now sanity personified I didn’t dare let a single word of complaint pass my lips. I didn’t even dare ask for a prognosis of the future but fortunately on this occasion Thomas was far less overpowered by my father’s personality than I was.

  “Supposing Kester never comes back, John?” he said hopefully. “Supposing he has to stay in the loony bin?”

  “I should think that’s most unlikely,” said my father, “and personally I have no doubt that he’ll recover. He’s as resilient as Ginevra, and look at the tragedies she survived! Besides, with Anna dead Oxmoon will be doubly important to him and he’ll be very anxious to return.”

  This struck me as a shrewd observation. I could just see Kester turning Oxmoon into a shrine to Anna.

  “No chance of him committing suicide?” said Thomas, refusing to abandon hope. I had a sneaking admiration for his monstrous honesty.

  “According to Declan,” said my father, “suicide’s never been mentioned. Declan suspects Kester has too many books he wants to write before he’s willing to contemplate death.”

  “Hell, I thought writers cut their throats all the time!”

  “Perhaps they have to run out of inspiration first.”

  Kester wouldn’t run out of inspiration. I foresaw years of teeming creativity ahead.

  “And anyway,” said my father, deciding he had permitted Thomas to be outrageous for long enough, “I can’t think why you’re so keen for Kester to depart for the next world because the truth is that if he dies we’ll both be excluded from the estate. He’s made a will in favor of little Owen Bryn-Davies, and I’m not among the trustees.”

  Thomas nearly had apoplexy. I kept my mouth shut and tried not to explode with bitterness. My cousin Elizabeth’s son was a fat child of nine whose sole interest in life appeared to be ice cream. I thought of Hal who was tall, straight, slim, athletic, clever and handsome, and experienced one of those rare moments when I realized what parenthood was all about. I forgot he was ill behaved, noisy and tiresome. All I could think was that Oxmoon was barely good enough for him.

  However before I could settle into this unlikely role of doting father, Bella returned from hospital and lapsed into the deepest depression. As the result of her injuries she had been advised to have no more children, and in a private conference with me the gynecologist advised that she should be sterilized once she had fully recovered from her ordeal.

  Meanwhile the ordeal dragged on. Melody wasn’t going to come back. Bella lost interest in sex. What was the point, she said listlessly, when nothing could come of it? The boys ran wild, the house was a mess, Nanny and the housekeeper gave notice. In desperation I sent an S.O.S. to Teddy, and delighted to have another serious problem to fix she rushed down to sort us out.

  After twenty-four hours she presented her report to me. We were in the drawing room after dinner. The boys were in bed. Bella was crying somewhere as usual. Teddy and I were drinking whisky and chain smoking.

  “Forget the sterilization,” she said bluntly. “She couldn’t take the fact that she’d never get pregnant again, and then she’d go nuts—really nuts, I mean, much worse than she is now.”

  “But what’s the alternative?”

  “Go on as you are. I’ve pointed out to her that no contraception is ever one hundred percent effective. After a while that fact’s bound to sink in, she’ll start to hope and then she’ll feel sexy again.”

  “Seems inconceivable.”

  Teddy gave me a shrewd look and said, “Let me talk to Gavin Warburton. I’ll ask him to recommend a psychiatrist.”

  “She’d never see one.”

  “Oh, you British are so dumb about psychiatrists! But they really do help people—why, look at Kester! He’s out of hospital now and able to live quietly with Declan.”

  But Bella shied away from all thought of a psychiatrist and in the end Teddy had to get her back on her feet single-handed. I kept on slogging away, Working so hard that I didn’t have time to dwell on the fact that I was getting no sex, and every time I wanted to go into Swansea for a quick fuck I got drunk to stop myself. The war had left me with a profound distaste for quick fucks. I wouldn’t have minded a quiet affair with some saint who would have died rather than give me a moment’s anxiety, but there was no time. I was either out on the land or looking after Bella or yelling at all those noisy little brutes I’d fathered in a fit of mental aberation. The dust began to settle on the piano.

  Slowly Teddy coaxed Bella to take an interest in her appearance again, and slowly Teddy managed to convey to her that husbands couldn’t be expected to behave like dedicated monks forever. It took Bella some while to realize she wasn’t the only one who was having a rough time but when the penny finally dropped she fell into a fever of insecurity. I suddenly found myself offered sex morning, noon and night by a wife who was busy dieting herself back into all her smartest clothes.

  “I’ll have to use something.”

  “It’s all right. I’ve accepted that now. Sorry I’ve been so stupid.”

  Teddy slipped back to London. Bella and I toiled on.

  “Oh Harry, you do love me, don’t you? Harry, do you still want me? Do you still think I’m sexy? Oh, say you love me, say it …”

  I said it. I would have said anything just to put an end to all those bloody questions. But I was so glad to have sex regularly again that I didn’t even mind the tedium of using sheaths.

  “Harry, I know those things are an awful bore for you and I don’t want to keep making you use them, you’re bound to get tired of me if I do, so I’ve decided to get a Dutch cap. Everyone has Dutch caps nowadays and I’ve asked Eleanor and she says they’re easy. Thomas can’t feel if—he doesn’t even know she’s got one. So if I did get a cap … well, it would be much nicer, wouldn’t it?”

  This was unarguable but I went with her to the gynecologist to make sure everything was all right. The gynecologist said yes, jolly good idea to have a cap, why not. While the thing was fitted I sat in the waiting room and read an elderly edition of Country Life.

  Bella emerged looking pale but swore all our problems were solved. There was a nice little shelf inside and the cap just slotted in. Easy. A bit messy and tedious, but once it was in you could forget all about it.

  I said to the gynecologist, “Are you sure she understands everything?”

  He was sure. He had given her the printed instructions he gave to all his patients who adopted this form of contraception, so even if she forgot what he had said she could always refresh her memory.

  Bella and I went to the nearest pub and had a gin-and-French apiece.

  “Bella, are you quite, quite sure yo
u can cope with this? Because if there’s any doubt in your mind—any doubt whatsoever—we’ll go on as before.”

  “Oh no, Harry,” she said earnestly. “I’ve no doubts—I’m happy as a lark and absolutely confident!”

  She got pregnant straightaway.

  IV

  By that time it was the March of 1947 and we were emerging from one of the worst winters in living memory. Many of my sheep had died. The milk yield had dropped. All the pipes had burst in the dairy. In the fuel shortage we had run out of coal. In short, life was a frozen hell and when Bella told me her pregnancy had been confirmed the news seemed like the last straw.

  “I might have known you’d never be able to cope!”

  “I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help it—”

  “No? Can you swear to me you used the damned thing every single time?”

  She swore but I knew she was lying. That was when I lost my temper and she broke down utterly.

  “Sometimes I didn’t like to ask you to wait until I’d put in—I was afraid you’d get impatient—go to another woman—”

  “I wish to hell I had. Anything rather than this.”

  Hysterics. Misery. Rage. Despair.

  That demon contraception. That devil reproduction. Wrecking marriages, ruining lives, causing untold agony and suffering.

  She refused to go back to the gynecologist, because she was afraid he’d think her a fool. But I somehow got her back to Dr. Warburton. The great advantage of Warburton, who was the best kind of family doctor even though he was getting long in the tooth, was that he knew about Melody. I’d realized by this time that no one who didn’t know about Melody had a hope of understanding what was going on.