The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  Lance looked at me with Bronwen’s green eyes, said politely,

  “I thought it was a vile scene. Excuse me, please” and followed Evan into the hall.

  “Tough,” muttered Dafydd. “Surprising.”

  “Under Evan’s thumb.” I made sure the door was shut before demanding: “What’s your verdict on that bloody assassin Declan Kinsella?”

  “If he knew Kester had killed Thomas he’d have kept his big mouth shut. You’re okay, Harry. He knows nothing.”

  “I suppose Kester revealed that Oxmoon had been extorted from him but refused to say how it was done.”

  “And he never will. Kester won’t want to confess to anyone, least of all to the brother who’s sentimental about him, that he’s nothing but a bloody murderer.”

  “Yes, but what are the odds on a man like Declan making a shrewd guess or two? My God, how he rocked them just now!”

  “So what? Nothing was proved, was it? And nothing can ever be proved. It’s just his word against yours and in the end you’re the one people will want to believe because it’ll be more comfortable to believe you than to believe him. Keep calm. Brazen it out. He can’t touch you.”

  “No, of course he can’t,” I said.

  But I was on the rack.

  VIII

  A week later Bronwen came to see me. She was wearing black and I noticed how that drained the color from her, emphasizing the faded red of her hair and the transparent quality of her skin. She looked ethereal, remote, like someone who had traveled a long, long way to see me from another world which no one could describe. Kissing her I said, “I’m very glad to see you.” I had seen little of her since my father’s death. She had spent day after day in seclusion, and her children had thought it best to leave her undisturbed.

  We sat down. I tried making small talk but she didn’t respond so at last I fell silent and the silence wrapped us together until I felt her mind entwining itself with mine.

  At last I said, “Evan’s been worrying you about me, hasn’t he?”

  “Oh, I see far beyond Evan.”

  I thought of those razor-sharp powers of observation grasping realities no one else could perceive.

  “I’m all right, Bronwen. And so’s Kester.” I groped for the words to answer her unspoken questions. “This is our way of living with each other,” I said at last. “We’ve finally resolved the problem.”

  She was silent again. Eventually I put my arm around her. “Tell me,” I said. “Come on, you didn’t come all the way to Oxmoon to say nothing.”

  “I came to remind you of your promise to Johnny.”

  Now it was my turn to be silent.

  “You said you’d go away, start afresh.”

  “I would have done. But Kester’s done it instead, so all’s well.”

  She shook her head. “I’m no fortune-teller,” she said. “I’ve always told you that. But when one knows two people very well one senses instinctively how they’ll behave in a certain situation, and I’m sure—I’m just so sure—”

  “Yes?”

  “Kester’s going to come back for Oxmoon, Harry. Your final clash with him is still to come.”

  Couldn’t tell her this was impossible. Couldn’t explain how I had the whip hand. “It’ll be all right, Bronwen, I promise you. I know everything’s going to be all right.”

  But did I know? Did I?

  Neurotic question. Of course I knew. I beat back the paranoia. Kester might well try to cook up some plot with Declan but the truth, was that any plot would be doomed to failure. He couldn’t declare he’d relinquished Oxmoon under duress unless he disclosed he was a murderer, and unless he could prove he had handed over Oxmoon under duress he could never recapture it.

  So I was safe—safe yet subtly divided from Bronwen, who believed I was doing the wrong thing. But she didn’t know Kester was a murderer, did she? She didn’t realize I’d had to move against him to protect myself from his aggression. She didn’t understand that it had been more or less my moral duty to act as I had—damn it, it had been my moral duty, no “more or less” about it. One really can’t let unconvicted murderers go running around persecuting innocent people; only the most naive would claim that retribution should be left entirely to God, and besides … isn’t God supposed to help those who help themselves?

  I’d never been quite sure whether I believed in God. When I was being a man of action I didn’t. When I was being a musician I did. On the whole I thought there was probably something out there somewhere, but whatever it was, I felt sure it could do with a human hand helping it along occasionally—for the best possible motives, of course. I’d given God a helping hand in assigning this retribution to Kester, although I had to be careful how I phrased that interpretation of my conduct because everyone knew about the maniacs who walked around and claimed to be God’s instrument all the while they murdered everyone in sight. Well, I wasn’t murdering everyone in sight. I’d simply put right a wrong, and my conscience was absolutely clear—although I did wish Bronwen hadn’t reminded me of my promise to my father.

  “I draw the line.”

  Yes. Well, I knew I’d left it a little late, but I really would draw the line now. No more trouble with Kester. I was going to settle down at Oxmoon and live a decent hardworking life.

  If he’d let me.

  I shuddered, and to calm myself I wandered through the house, my house, through all those beautiful rooms which I now knew I could never change. I had to keep Oxmoon exactly as it was, just as if I’d been Kester; but of course I was Kester, I’d taken over his life as well as his house, and now he was me, dispossessed and in exile; it was as if some transference of the personality had taken place, although that was a mad thought which I couldn’t possibly believe so I had to think of something else. I walked on through the beautiful rooms and tried to meditate on Beauty, Truth, Art and Peace—but I couldn’t because I wasn’t at peace, not yet. But I would be. In time.

  I reached the ballroom and as I sat down at the white-and-gold piano I remembered how often I had dreamed of being alone there to play “The Blue Danube.” I played it. Another dream had come true, and as I stroked the hackneyed tune in that beautiful room the melody became fresh again, reborn and renewed, a symbol of a perfection that could never die.

  I felt better. I went on feeling better until I was passing through the hall again and noticed the jade statuette which Kester had used to prop open the front door on the night of Thomas’s murder. That little memento would have to go. In sudden distaste I picked it up but I hadn’t anticipated its weight and it slid through my fingers to crash back upon the side table. I tried to catch it. My hand knocked one of the Chinese vases nearby. The vase toppled. I grabbed at it. I missed. It smashed. I winced.

  A pity.

  Never mind, it was just a vase. Of course if I were really neurotic I’d tell myself the smash was an omen.

  I told myself the smash was an omen. Rubbish!

  Or was it?

  To my horror I found I didn’t know.

  IX

  By the time my three eldest boys returned home for the summer holidays their new rooms were ready for them and their possessions had been moved to Oxmoon from the Manor. Lucky little sods, growing up at Oxmoon! I thought of my soul-destroying years at the mausoleum on Eaton Walk.

  I wasn’t yet sure what to do with the Manor but I thought I might let the house and grounds while merging the Home Farm with the Oxmoon estate. I had now been studying Oxmoon’s affairs for some weeks, and there was no doubt I needed all the land I could get if I were to live comfortably without the aid of Bobby Godwin’s depleted but useful personal fortune. Kester still had access to that little nest egg: However, provided the estate was well run—and provided the Labour government was slung out at the next election—and provided I beat my brains out to gyp the Inland Revenue legally whenever I could—and provided there were no disastrous Acts of God such as floods or blizzards—I thought I could do well enough. It was certainly a ch
allenge. No longer could I complain of an unsatisfied ambition and recurring boredom. I’d got what I wanted and now all I had to do was put my nose to the grindstone and work like a Trojan until the estate was running with maximum efficiency.

  I’d been working so hard that I hadn’t visited the boys as I usually did once a term, and because I’d had no opportunity to see them I hadn’t told them of the move from the Manor. During the spring holidays I’d merely said I was looking after Oxmoon for a time while Kester was ill, and even after Kester had signed the deed of gift I’d had a superstitious dread of saying I was master of Oxmoon until I was actually living in the house. But now I was glad of my reticence. I thought it would make a wonderful surprise for the boys when I revealed they had a new home, and I had promised Humphrey that he could be the one to tell them the good news.

  We met them at the station in Swansea. The trunks traveled separately, and the boys were carrying only their overnight bags as they raced down the platform to the ticket barrier. They all seemed larger and noisier than ever. Hal was going to be twelve that October. He had grown again and was much thinner than Charles and Jack who were shorter, squarer and heavier than he was.

  “We’ve got a secret!” piped Humphrey after the initial clamor had died down. Clinging to my hand he jumped up and down with excitement.

  “Wait till we get to the car,” I ordered, so we headed out of the station and Humphrey somehow managed to hold his tongue.

  “Is Kester back yet?” said Hal. “He wrote to me from Ireland but he didn’t say when he’d be returning.”

  I immediately felt persecuted. “What did he say?”

  “Oh, just that he was better and having a nice holiday. I wrote back and asked when he’d be coming home but I haven’t had a reply. Perhaps there’s a letter waiting at the Manor.”

  I was horrified. I’d had no idea that Kester was in the habit of writing to Hal at school. If I’d known I’d have stopped it. I’d had just about enough of Kester trying to turn my son into an acolyte.

  “Can I tell them now, can I tell them?” sang Humphrey, still bobbing up and down like a cork, and I suddenly realized we had reached the car. A couple of fiends had parked too close to me at the front and back; I was going to have a diabolical time getting out.

  “Well …” Still contemplating my parking problem I wasn’t at my quickest.

  Interpreting “Well” as “Yes,” Humphrey shouted to his brothers: “Kester’s gone away for good and Daddy’s the master now and we’re all going to live at Oxmoon forever!”

  Uproar. Charles and Jack cheered and flung their caps in the air. Hal looked pale and shocked.

  “Into the car,” I said, “before we’re all arrested for breach of the peace.”

  According to tradition the three youngest crammed themselves into the back and Hal claimed the privileged position on the front seat. As soon as the doors were slammed he turned to me.

  “Daddy, I don’t understand. Kester would never abandon Oxmoon forever—it’s his shrine to Anna, it’s his monument to Beauty, Truth, Art and—”

  “Quite,” I said, starting the engine, “but unfortunately, Hal, Kester’s health can no longer stand the strain and he now has to live very quietly.” I turned to glance out of the back window as I put the car into reverse.

  “Are we rich now?” said Charles exuberantly. “Can I have my own gramophone?”

  “Can we keep Kester’s television?” said Jack wildly.

  “Over my dead body.” I could have kicked myself for not dumping the set before the holidays began. Those boys made quite enough noise without adding a television to the cacophony.

  Changing gears I wrestled with the wheel again.

  “Daddy …” Hal was trying to talk to me, and as I glanced at him I saw that his pallor had assumed a greenish tinge. “Daddy, is Kester dying? I’m sure he wouldn’t give up Oxmoon unless he was! Has he got that awful disease, the one his father died of? Cook told me the disease was so terrible that no one knew what it was called, and I used to have nightmares in case it ran in the family and we all died of it one by one—”

  Very neurotic. Had to slap that one down straightaway. “What nonsense! Of course the disease had a name! It was called multiple sclerosis and not everyone dies of it within ten years as Uncle Robert did—some people have it for three times as long and even lead normal lives. It’s not catching and it’s not hereditary and by the time you’ve grown up they’ll probably have found a cure for it.” I slammed the car into reverse again.

  “Daddy, do you promise me he’s not dying?”

  “Oh, stop being so idiotic, Hal! Of course he’s not dying! He’s just having a nervous breakdown!”

  “Then he’ll come back,” said Hal. “When he’s better he’ll come back to Oxmoon.”

  I stalled the car. Swearing under my breath, I restarted the engine. “Hal, he’s not coming back. He’s given Oxmoon to me. We’re there for good.”

  “But Daddy—”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Hal, stop pestering me and let me get out of this bloody space!”

  That was bad. Although I did swear before the children, I restricted my language to a mild “Damn” or “Blast.” In panic I realized I was mishandling the scene, and once more I was overwhelmed by my failure to be an adequate parent,

  “I’m sorry, Hal,” I said as by some miracle of willpower I got the car away from the curb and drove off. “I realize this is all rather a surprise for you, but—”

  “I’ll see him again, won’t I?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Why hadn’t I anticipated that he’d be so upset? What a rotten father I was. “Oh yes, of course you’ll see him again,” I said glibly, and thought: But not if I can help it.

  “Can I ring him up in Ireland?”

  Who would have thought he’d be so tenacious? He was going on and on at me like a miniature battering ram. “Well, we’ll talk about that later, Hal,” I said, and called to the boys in the back: “How did Sports Day go?”

  We drove on to Oxmoon, Charles and Jack chattering happily, Humphrey tossing in a question now and then and Hal sitting quiet as a ghost in the front seat. When we arrived Charles, and Jack scampered everywhere yelling with delight but Hal disappeared. I found him later in the den, once known as “Aunt Celia’s music room,” where Kester kept his television set. It was the one twentieth-century room on the ground floor. Demented abstracts adorned the walls and were reflected in a distorted fashion by the curve of the magnifier on the television screen. Hal was sitting on the window seat, and as soon as I entered the room I saw that he had been crying.

  I didn’t know what to say. I was such a hopeless father and I didn’t know what to say. All I could offer him was the futile question “Is everything all right, Hal?”

  “Oh yes, Daddy,” he said. “Wizard.”

  But I had been here before. I had been where Hal was and now I was standing in my father’s shoes. In mounting panic I realized that something was going very, very wrong.

  “Hal, I … it was stupid of me not to realize you’d be so upset—”

  “We were going to do The Tempest in the ballroom, Kester was going to adapt the play specially for us, I was so looking forward to it, I just took it for granted he’d be home by the time I got back for the holidays …”

  I’d forgotten the Oxmoon tea-party set.

  “I’m sorry, Hal, I really am.”

  “It’s all right,” said Hal, making a great effort to respond to a sympathy he sensed was genuine. “You weren’t to know.”

  I wasn’t to know. Why not? Why hadn’t he told me? Why had he never talked about it? My fault, of course. I’d done something wrong. But what was it? My God, what a torture parenthood was, what a bloody crucifixion. …

  “I think I’ll write to Kester,” said Hal, standing up. “I’ll feel better then.”

  My scalp prickled. “Well, to tell you the truth, Hal,” I said, “I’d rather you didn’t write to him. In fact to be honest,
I’d rather you didn’t have any further communication with him at all.”

  “Why?” His dark eyes were suddenly bright with anger.

  “Well, you see, Kester and I aren’t exactly the best of friends, and I just feel that in the circumstances—”

  “Oh, I know you hate each other,” said Hal flatly. “That’s no news to me.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “No. He never says a word against you. But everyone knows, don’t they? It’s an open secret.” I saw his fists clench at his sides. “And now,” he said, his voice shaking, “you’re trying to turn me against him.”

  “Not at all. I’m simply saying that it’s time Kester stopped treating you as his page boy. He’s got no right to you anyway. You’re my son, not his.”

  “More’s the pity,” said Hal.

  Silence. Black eyes regarded me with implacable bitterness. That fine-drawn jaw was suddenly sculpted in iron.

  “Would you say that again, please?” I said. I felt as if I’d sustained some horrifying injury.

  “No,” said Hal, “I won’t. You’ll beat me.”

  “That’s right, I will. And if you ever, ever say such a thing again after all the bloody trouble I’ve taken to bring you up—”

  “If I was nothing but a bloody trouble, why didn’t you turn me over to Kester altogether? I was never a bloody trouble to Kester!”

  “That’s because he has no idea what parenthood’s really like!”

  “Well, if you hate it so much, why did you do it? Why did you go on and on making Mummy have babies till she died of it?”

  “I—”

  “You killed her! You took her away from me! And now you’re taking Kester away from me too! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” screamed Hal, trying to run out of the room, but I slammed him back against the wall.

  “I didn’t kill your mother!” I shouted, stumbling over my words. “I tried to save her, I did everything I could, I—”

  He spat at me.

  Well, I really couldn’t let that pass, I mean, I couldn’t, could I? One can’t let children think they can spit at their parents and get away with it.