The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  More sulks followed and this time no bottle of whisky was put forward as a peace offering. Then I heard he was saying my dairy herd, which I had built up from scratch with great expense and care, had fallen victim to the dairy farmer’s nightmare, contagious abortion. This was clearly untrue, since there had been no deterioration in the farm’s milk yield, but nevertheless when I sent some heifers to market I could see the farmers shying away from them. I had to spend so much time and money engaging the vet to examine every single one of my herd to testify that they were free of infection that I told Thomas I’d sue him if he repeated the slander but Thomas was indignant, declared he’d never said a word against my bloody cows, he hated cows anyway, always had, in his opinion no cow could ever be half so absorbing as a piglet, a hog, a boar, a gilt or a sow. Equally enraged we hung up and I thought I’d heard the last of him but a week later he accused me of starting a rumor that his large whites were suffering from virus pneumonia—a hazard in pig farming which can have almost as dire consequences as contagious abortion in a dairy herd.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” I said exasperated. “Why would I want to circulate stories that are obviously untrue?”

  “You’re out for revenge. You thought I’d started that rumor about your cows. I hadn’t, of course—”

  “I’m out for nothing but a quiet life, Thomas,” I said, and slammed down the telephone receiver.

  But it seemed that fate—or what was masquerading as fate—was determined to keep us at loggerheads. A month later I returned to the Manor from Martinscombe to find Thomas lying in wait for me in the drive. He was seething. He looked as if he’d had at least three whiskies. My heart sank.

  “All right, let’s have it,” I said resigned, getting out of my car. “What’s the new rumor I’m supposed to have started?”

  He tried to hit me. That was stupid. I knocked him out. Then I remembered my father and realized with reluctance that I had to make an effort to reestablish the peace. Fetching a tumbler of whisky, I revived the sod, steered him inside the house to my study and dumped him into the nearest armchair.

  “Now, look here, Thomas—”

  “You bastard, how dare you say I’m always too pissed to get it up!”

  One can’t conduct a rational argument with someone in that state. I just said mildly, “Who did I say it to?”

  “Bloody everyone! Richard says he heard it in Penhale!”

  “So that oaf’s back at Oxmoon playing the court jester again! Doesn’t he ever do any work in that, London job of his?”

  “Don’t try and change the subject! Richard went into the pub for a drink and he heard you’d said that Eleanor was divorcing me for impotence!”

  “Impotence isn’t a ground for divorce. Either Richard’s practicing some particularly tasteless piece of buffoonery, which is quite possible, or else he’s passing on someone else’s lies.”

  “But—”

  “Thomas, this may amaze you, but I’m just not interested in your sex life. And I’m not interested in gossiping either. I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

  “You bloody liar,” said Thomas automatically, but the words lacked conviction. To cover his uncertainty he demanded, “Give me some more whisky.”

  I refueled him, remembered my father again and groped feverishly for a suitable olive branch of peace. “Look, old chap,” I said, “of course I don’t think you’re impotent—in fact if you’re free tomorrow night, why don’t you come into Swansea with me? I’m taking a girl out to dinner but she’s bound to know another girl who could make up a quartet, and then after dinner we can all go out to my Rhossili cottage and enjoy ourselves.”

  Thomas goggled at me. “So that’s why you bought that cottage!” he exclaimed with touching naivety, and added, worried: “But what can I say to Eleanor?”

  “Say you’re having dinner with me in Swansea to celebrate the start of a new friendship between us.”

  He brightened. “That’s an idea. Bloody decent of you, Harry, thanks a lot! As a matter of fact … well, Eleanor’s not too keen on that sort of thing nowadays so I’m up the creek. I did think of looking around but … not so easy, is it? I’m very discriminating, you know—can’t stand tarts or shady ladies … My God, Harry, your girl’s not a tart, is she?”

  “Of course not. Why pay for a cow when you can get milk through the fence?”

  Thomas was so overcome by this proposition that I was again amazed by his lack of sophistication. I even wondered not only whether he’d been faithful to Eleanor despite his prolonged absence in the war but whether he’d been a virgin when he married. I poured myself some more whisky. It was hard work coping with an adolescent of forty-one.

  “Suppose you do this sort of thing all the time,” said Thomas wistfully, and then realizing he was giving himself away he moved to set the record straight. “Of course I used to as well before I was married. Do you remember Mrs. Wells?”

  I remembered her very well. She had been the loyal housekeeper at Penhale Manor when my father had lived there with Bronwen. “I used to sleep with her now and then,” said Thomas with an elegiac sigh.

  “With Mrs. Wells? She must have been old enough to be your mother!”

  “Yes, but she was a good sort.”

  “Oh, the best, I agree, but—”

  “We were at Oxmoon alone together for a few weeks—it was after my father went crazy and Milly walked out. Then later when I was living at Little Oxmoon Mabel—Mrs. Wells—used to visit me on her day off.” He sighed heavily again. “I wonder what happened to her. She went east, you know, after John and Bronwen parted, and she wrote a couple of times but I never wrote back. Poor old girl. Suppose she’s probably dead by now.”

  “Probably. Thomas, talking of housekeepers … what happened to Milly Straker?”

  “God knows, but you can bet she’s alive and well somewhere—probably enjoying herself as a Mayfair madam touring the best tarts in town! Did I ever tell you … oh yes, I did. All that bloody perverted stuff John and I turned up. Disgusting.”

  I steered him away from the subject of my grandfather’s sexual tastes which he evidently found so enthralling, and when I eventually managed to get rid of him we parted bosom friends. He said he could hardly wait for his night out. I began to wonder what on earth I’d let myself in for.

  To cut a long story short we had a wild evening, although by that time I wasn’t in favor of wild evenings and would have much preferred some sophisticated hours à deux; the difficulties of finding adequate privacy during the war had left me with a profound distaste for any sexual entertainment that could remotely be described as gregarious. However I didn’t want to spoil anyone else’s fun, so after the necessary formality of a quick dinner at a cheap Indian restaurant I drove us all to my cottage and dispatched Thomas and his new girlfriend upstairs to the double bed.

  Unfortunately the second bedroom was still unfurnished but Dorothy and I put the living-room sofa to good use, and in fact we were barely halfway through our entertainment when Thomas and his girl, who I think was called Irene, came clattering drunkenly downstairs to watch. I tried to go on strike to get some privacy but the two wretched girls, both of them stark naked, jumped on me and said they refused to let me be a spoilsport, so what was I to do? Of course we were all as tight as owls. Thomas, damn him, applauded occasionally but made no effort to join in. I thought his behavior went a long way to confirming the rumors of his impotence although the next day when I stripped the bed I discovered he hadn’t been entirely idle; later he even told me he’d had the time of his life so presumably he at least didn’t feel he’d wasted his opportunities.

  Well, as I’ve said, I hadn’t much time for that kind of frolic, so when Thomas suggested we repeated the session I turned him down. However since he was obviously dead keen to pursue Irene I did agree to lend him the cottage for an evening.

  The next thing I knew I had Richard, Kester’s jester, on my doorstep to ask if he too could borrow the famous double
bed at Rhossili.

  “No, you bloody can’t!” I said much annoyed. “And how the hell did you hear about it anyway?”

  “My dear Harry, it’s the talk of Gower! The preacher at Penhale Chapel even called at Oxmoon yesterday and told Kester he had a moral duty as master of Oxmoon to stop his family’s debauched goings-on!”

  I guessed what had happened. I myself was always discreet, pulling all the curtains, shutting the necessary windows and never staying later than midnight. But Thomas, galloping around like an addled teen-ager, had probably had sex in a well-lit uncurtained room and made enough noise to wake the dead in the nearby churchyard.

  I wasn’t exactly my uncle’s keeper but since I’d lent Thomas the cottage I did feel in some degree responsible for the uproar he had caused, so I phoned Kester to apologize.

  “Don’t give it another thought, old chap!” said Kester kindly. “I thought the minister was great fun.”

  I was only too anxious not to give the incident another thought but unfortunately Thomas had other ideas. Three days later I once more returned from work to find him lurking whisky-sodden in the drive.

  “You …” Abuse flowed freely. I sighed and prayed for patience.

  “Thomas, I think we’ve played this scene before. Let me forestall you by saying I haven’t gossiped about your sex life to a single soul.”

  “Then how did Eleanor find out?”

  “Oh God …” I sighed and prayed again. “For Christ’s sake, Thomas, all Rhossili knows! What the hell you got up to I can’t imagine, but—”

  “You were angry that I’d left the cottage in a mess so you told Eleanor in order to pay me back!”

  “I agree the mess was frightful but that was my fault. I should have laid down strict rules for you, but how was I to know you’d wreck the lavatory and upset the hip bath all over the kitchen floor?”

  “You’ve destroyed my marriage! And if Eleanor divorces me I’ll have no home and my whole life will be wrecked!”

  “She won’t divorce you—she’s probably only too relieved you’ve got off your arse and gone elsewhere for sex!”

  “Relieved! Christ, you should have heard some of the things she said!”

  “Well, of course she had to make a fuss! Allow her some dignity, can’t you? God, you’re a stupid man!”

  “You bloody swine!” He took a swipe at me and missed. “I’ll get my revenge on you one day, just you wait and see!” he roared as my housekeeper watched the scene beyond the open front door. “No man wrecks my life and gets away with it!” And he drove off erratically in his Hillman leaving a trail of whisky fumes in his wake.

  My father was saddened by this new quarrel but I did succeed in convincing him that this time Thomas was entirely to blame. However I could see that my father took a jaundiced view of my cottage at Rhossili.

  “I’m entirely in favor of you abstaining from remarriage until you’re ready for it,” he said drily, “but surely you can organize your private life with more discretion? I’m afraid you’re getting the most unfortunate reputation.”

  He didn’t openly compare me with Kester, who was still living the life of a model widower, but I knew he had Kester in mind. I felt angry, and finally it occurred to me to wonder just who these village gossips were, alienating me persistently from Thomas so that I wound up in my father’s bad books. Yet even then I had no inkling of the truth. I was distracted by the knowledge that villages like Penhale are always hotbeds of gossip, and besides, I knew I had been indiscreet, picking a cottage at Rhossili for my activities when I should have chosen a more anonymous base in Swansea.

  I tried to turn over a new leaf. I prolonged an affair with a woman who ran an employment agency and who, wedded to her career, appeared to be uninterested in marriage. She had a flat overlooking the Mumbles lighthouse, and twice a week I used to trek to Swansea to put my private life on a discreet footing. Yet I didn’t want to get too serious with anyone who wasn’t a magic lady. In fact the very thought of getting serious made me want to run a mile in the opposite direction, and several times whenever I felt that Norah was becoming too affectionate I slept with someone else in order to reassure myself that I wasn’t getting involved. That condemned me to the back seat of my car again because I had foolishly decided that using Norah’s flat enabled me to make money by letting the Rhossili cottage, but so frightened was I by my increasing liking for Norah that the back seat of a car seemed a small price to pay for soothing my ruffled nerves.

  Meanwhile as I muddled on in this neurotic and abortive quest for my mythical magic lady, Thomas and I had remained estranged, much to my relief, and his marriage had remained intact, much to his. But I began to wonder if his days as the Oxmoon manager were numbered. Kester struck me as being discontented. I saw little of him, but whenever we met in Penhale he never missed an opportunity to grumble about Thomas and I, sympathetic audience that I was, always allowed myself time to listen. It occurred to me that Kester might well relieve his feelings by swinging a hatchet in Thomas’s direction, and that was why, when Kester at last showed his hand, all my paranoia came rushing back into my mind.

  Kester invited me to an all-male family luncheon party at Oxmoon to celebrate the conclusion of Evan and Gerry’s university careers, and the date he had picked was July the thirteenth, 1949.

  The warning bell rang once more; the date set the famous nerves of steel jangling and without a second’s hesitation I telephoned my father.

  III

  By that time my father had succeeded in shaking off the lingering aftereffects of his life with Constance and was sunk deep in the bliss of his third marriage. Naturally I could understand him being happy with Bronwen but what I found harder to understand was how he fitted so tranquilly into his casual, noisy and, to put it brutally, middle-class surroundings among all those peculiar Canadians he had fathered in a lost era.

  The Canadians ebbed and flowed into the house according to the university vacations, and when they were at home they seemed to spend their time laughing, shouting, eating and playing Frank Sinatra records too loudly on the radiogram. I couldn’t have stood it but my father said it was wonderful to be surrounded by young people who were enjoying life so much. He and Bronwen led a busy life. My father was on several civic committees concerned with the reconstruction of Swansea and had acquired the usual number of directorships which always fell into his lap whenever he moved to a new place. Bronwen was an active member of the Women’s Institute and had a part-time job in the library of the Red Cross. Both she and my father knew hordes of people. Dinner parties abounded. I never visited their house without thinking how different their new life was from their past in Penhale, and whenever I saw my father’s happiness, inexplicable though it was in part, I recognized the lack in my own life and felt lonely.

  When I arrived to see my father that evening in July I found Bronwen making two large treacle tarts, Lance raiding the larder, Gerry chatting to his latest girlfriend on the telephone, Evan separating the dog and cat, who were having one of their fights, and my father mending the television set. Sian was still completing her final term at Bedales. When I entered the drawing room my father, who had discarded both jacket and waistcoat to tackle the television and was looking dashingly déclassé in his braces, glanced up at me with a smile.

  I saw then what an impossible task I had set myself. The atmosphere of happiness in the house, the absolute normality, the peace—of a kind—now divided my father from me. I knew instinctively that he would disbelieve every word I said.

  “Could I have a word with you alone, please, Father?”

  That move took us to his study. My father mixed drinks for us and told me some interminable golfing story while I tried to work out what I could say without sounding hopelessly melodramatic.

  I spoke. Within ten seconds my father was looking at me as if I’d gone round the bend. My heart sank.

  “Just a minute,” said my father, making the humane decision that I should be treated gently. “Let
me make sure I’ve got this straight. You think there’s some sinister purpose behind this luncheon party because it’s being given on the tenth anniversary of that appalling scene at Oxmoon when Kester got himself into such a mess.”

  “Yes.” I felt close to despair.

  “But what in God’s name do you think he’s going to do?”

  “I think he’ll fire Thomas in such a way that Thomas is as humiliated before all the family as Kester himself was once humiliated before us. Honestly, Father, I think you should warn Thomas, I really do. I’d warn him myself, but as we’re not on speaking terms I know he wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “Yes, knowing the state of your relationship with Thomas, may I ask why you should care whether he’s fired or not?”

  “Because I think Kester’s going to use me as a scapegoat, Father, and once Thomas goes berserk—as he inevitably will—his rage will be directed primarily against me and not against Kester. I think Kester’s been at the bottom of my rift with Thomas all along—I think he’s been fermenting trouble between us to set me up for the kill—”

  “The kill?”

  “Well, of course I’m not speaking literally—”

  “No, you’re talking rubbish.” He opened the door into the hall. Gerry the Wonder Boy had finished his phone call but was sticking a stamp on a letter. I immediately suspected him of eavesdropping.

  “Gerry, tell Evan I want to speak to him, will you?”

  “Right, Dad.” Wonder Boy sped off with a click of his winged heels.

  Sensing that I was opposed to this summons my father said to me, “Evan sees more of Kester than you do. If Kester’s really so unbalanced that he would bear a grudge for ten years and then serve it up without warning at a friendly family gathering, then Evan should be able to back up this preposterous theory of yours.”