The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “I’ll join you later.”

  My father withdrew, coffee mug in hand, and presently we heard the faint strains of chamber music in his room. Pam began to load the dishwasher. I was busy finishing my coffee and repressing the craving for a cigarette.

  “Can I give you some advice?” said Pam presently. “Don’t let your discussions with your father degenerate into arguments. Try listening and making neutral comments. You’ll learn more.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “I’m quite serious.”

  “So am I. I need all the tips I can get.”

  Pam gave me one of her thin smiles of approval and closed the dishwasher. Then she said abruptly: “What do you really think about Declan Kinsella’s evidence during the Bryn-Davies lawsuit?”

  “The accusation of murder?”

  “No, the accusation of extortion.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Pam, sitting down opposite me again. “I can understand why you found the accusation of murder preposterous—in view of the findings of the inquest everyone did. But the extortion’s rather a different kettle of fish, isn’t it? I think many people secretly believe your father extorted Oxmoon from Kester, and bearing in mind your attitude to both those men I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if you told me you believed that too.”

  I saw her point. “I still say extortion’s impossible. If you argue that Father obtained Oxmoon by duress what you’re really saying is that he blackmailed Kester, and once you say he blackmailed Kester you imply, that Kester had done something that would render him liable to blackmail. And that’s out of the question.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “I suppose that ranks as a neutral comment.”

  She smiled. “Perhaps!”

  “I know just what you’re thinking,” I said. “You think I’m blinded by hero worship where Kester’s concerned.”

  “You don’t see him as a hero?”

  “No, of course not. Heroes only exist in myths.”

  “Then how would you describe him?”

  This was easy. “He was a magician,” I said. “He waved his magic wand and fantasy became reality. Oxmoon was a fairy-tale palace. Home was crude and noisy and boring, all those damned brothers getting under my feet and my father shouting at me, but whenever I went up to Oxmoon Kester led me through the looking glass into another world. He encouraged me to play the piano in the ballroom, he talked to me about books and art and films and the theater. I’d go up to Oxmoon and suddenly life wasn’t boring anymore, life was glittering, and there at the center of it all was my magician, talking of all the values that made life worth living. Of course he was an idealist, but what made him so different from the usual crackpot was that he was strong and brave and he had the guts to stand up for what he believed in, he didn’t compromise his principles just to follow the crowd. There was a line from Byron he used to quote: ‘Yet Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like a thunderstorm against the wind.’ I often remember that line when I think of Kester because he wasn’t afraid to go against the wind. He knew freedom. He kept faith with himself. He was a hero.”

  I stopped. Pam said nothing. Presently I managed to say: “Okay, very clever, I congratulate you, you caught me out. I said I didn’t see him as a hero and here I am, describing him as just that. But all I can say is that Kester was one of those rare men who deserve such a description because now I’m grown up I know it’s not easy to maintain one’s idealism, as he did, in a corrupt cynical world. You have to be very strong to go against the wind. I’ve found that out for myself.”

  Pam waited a moment before saying: “Don’t think I can’t accept what you say. Obviously Kester was able to show you children who visited him regularly at Oxmoon a very special side of himself, but what kind of a magician was he, Hal? What kind of spell was he really weaving, and for what reasons?”

  “Well, you’re the psychiatrist who knows all the answers. You tell me.”

  “The day I start believing I know all the answers is the day I need to be certified, but this situation does strongly suggest to me that Kester used you children as an emotional outlet and that the more his fortunes waned the more necessary it became to him that he should have a bunch of little supporters who all loyally regarded him as a hero. In other words I suspect he was on rather a dubious ego trip and his motives were far more clouded than you’ve ever been able to acknowledge.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You’re being much too simple about this, Hal, much too ready to see everything in black-and-white. This is a complex case which embraces all the colors of the emotional spectrum. Be careful about rushing to judgment.”

  In the pause that followed I was aware of Vivaldi’s music far away, very pure, very precise, a soothingly clear-cut translation of black notes on white paper.

  “You don’t want me to get involved in all this, do you?” I said at last.

  “No, but I accept that I can’t stop you.”

  “Why don’t you want me to get involved?”

  “Because I don’t think this quest will help you. Obviously you’ve reached the point where you have to come to terms with Kester’s death before you can go on with your life, but what worries me is that this solution which you’ve invented for yourself will create more problems than it solves.”

  “Go on.”

  “You seem to think,” said Pam, “that if only you can uncover the truth—THE TRUTH, in capital letters—everything will automatically be resolved but in fact this is most unlikely to happen. For a start it’s almost certain that THE TRUTH, whatever that is, can never now be established beyond all reasonable doubt. In other words, you’ll get nowhere, Hal, and that won’t solve your problem—quite the reverse. It’ll simply make you as obsessive about Kester as your father is. The real truth—as opposed to THE TRUTH in capital letters—is that there’s only one way to come to terms with Kester’s death, and that’s to acknowledge that his absence is something you can’t change. How he died doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he loved you but he’s gone.”

  “But I have to prove he didn’t choose to go.”

  “You mean you have to prove he loved you and didn’t abandon you voluntarily. You have to prove that his heroism wasn’t a fraud.”

  “If you like. It’s all one.” I got up and began to move restlessly around the room. Finally I swung to face her. “What do you believe?” I demanded. “Don’t try and tell me you haven’t worked out what happened!”

  “The suicide theory can certainly be made to look convincing.”

  “But suppose I were to tell you that after he died both Gwyneth Llewellyn and I were convinced he would never have left us like that?”

  “I’m afraid I’d reply that this is the classic reaction of a suicide’s bereaved relatives. The terrible truth is that a suicide can and does leave those he loves, and in fact often feels he’s doing them a favor.”

  “Give me one good reason why Kester would have thought he was doing us a favor by killing himself!”

  “I’d prefer not to at this stage. I don’t think you could handle it.”

  “I think that’s the most infuriating thing you’ve ever said to me. If you’re trying to protect me from—”

  “I’m trying to save my breath. If I told you my theory you’d ridicule it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s not consistent with your picture of Kester.” She too rose to her feet and moved closer to me. “Hal, let me give you one last tip, Be very careful. If you’ve been spellbound by a magician you could be more vulnerable than you realize. You’re like someone on a trip. You could have a hard time coming down.”

  It always startled me when Pam used hip phrases but she picked them up during her part-time work at Assumptionsville, the trendy new clinic for drug addicts on the outskirts of Swansea.

  “If I’m on a trip,” I said, “it’s got nothing to do with Kester’s spells. I’m
not mainlining on magic. I’m mainlining on truth.”

  “Then fasten your seat belt,” said Pam, wryly misquoting the immortal line from All About Eve, “because I think you’re in for a bumpy ride.”

  2

  I

  THE NEXT MORNING I hitched a ride to Swansea, hired a car and found a shop that sold camping supplies. I had told my father the truth when I’d said I wasn’t short of money. I’d long since blown my legacy from my grandfather, but I had three thousand pounds in a bank in London, not a large sum compared with the fortune the Beatles must have been amassing, but a useful one. It was certainly enough to enable me to live like a hermit at Oxmoon while I sorted myself out.

  I chose my supplies, collected some miscellaneous items from Woolworth’s and stopped at a suburban supermarket. When I arrived home the gates were unlocked. I guessed this meant my father had a visitor, possibly the local doctor, so I avoided the mews house and went directly to the old kitchens. I had collected the key of the back door from Pam after breakfast.

  I had decided to camp out in the scullery not for its aesthetic beauty but because it offered certain practical advantages. There was water available. There was an outside lavatory near the back door. There were cupboards with shelves where I could stash my supplies. There was even an old wooden table with two broken chairs which Pam had thought too decrepit to donate to charity. After unloading my gear I fixed the chairs with glue and a screwdriver, set a couple of mousetraps and assembled the Primus stove so that I could brew myself some coffee. Then I discovered the water had been turned off. This was no big surprise but I was annoyed when I failed to find the wheel that would turn on the supply, and it was at that point that I glanced out of the window and saw two men standing by the front door of the mews house at the other end of the yard. One was my father. The other was obviously the owner of the white Ford parked nearby, but it wasn’t the local doctor. It was my father’s stepbrother Dafydd Morgan.

  I crossed the yard to join them and as I drew nearer they fell silent. They made an odd couple, my father heavily bearded like some middle-aged dropout, Dafydd as morose as a hit man in a modern movie. My father had once said he found Dafydd restful but that was the last word I should ever have used to describe Dafydd Morgan. I found him sinister. It occurred to me to wonder for the first time what Pam thought of their unlikely but profound friendship. It crossed all the normal barriers of class which hamstrung men of their age. They appeared to have nothing in common. But my father, recluse though he was, couldn’t bear to be parted for long from Dafydd while Dafydd, turning up regularly for a cigarette and a cup of tea, apparently couldn’t bear to be parted for long from him.

  “Hi,” I called when I was within earshot.

  Dafydd grunted an acknowledgment. His sharp little eyes looked me up and down. All he said was “Your father was telling me you were back.” He had an odd accent which wasn’t entirely Welsh. Having spent some years at the village school in Penhale he had more than a hint of the old Gower inflections which were becoming obsolete. In the old days the men of the Gower Englishry had felt closer to Devon than to Wales.

  “How’s business?”

  “Good.”

  He owned a building firm which specialized in converting cottages into holiday homes, and he had supervised the conversion of the mews. Remembering his legendary talent as a handyman I found myself saying to him automatically: “I wonder if you could give me a hand for a moment? I can’t see how to turn on the bloody water.”

  Despite his morose air he set off with me willingly enough, but my father remained by the house. It was probably one of his days when he was afraid to cross the courtyard. When I reached the scullery I looked back at him but he hadn’t moved and his extreme stillness hinted at his tension.

  “Could the wheel be in the cellar?” I said to Dafydd.

  “No, it’s in the old wet laundry.” He led me straight there and tried to turn the wheel himself but his wrists weren’t strong enough. His years as a prisoner of war had impaired his strength and the wheel was stiff with disuse.

  “I’ll do it.” I used some muscle and presently we had water running in the main sink.

  “Want me to check the toilet for you?”

  “Thanks.”

  We withdrew to the lavatory. He stood on the seat to examine the tank but it was filling. Giving a grunt of satisfaction he stepped down. “We’ll flush it in a minute to make sure the cistern’s okay,” he said, so we stood there waiting for the tank to fill.

  “I hear you’re giving your father a hard time as usual,” he said suddenly.

  “Not at all. I’m trying to make things easier for us both.”

  “Bloody funny way of doing it.” He stared bleakly at the stained lavatory bowl.

  “I’m glad you find it amusing.”

  He didn’t like that but although he gave me a surly look he kept quiet.

  “I suppose you share Father’s view that Kester committed suicide.”

  “I don’t give a shit how he died. He’s dead, thank God, and that’s all that matters.” The water stopped running. He reached up, grasped the chain and pulled it. Water cascaded through the bowl.

  “Why did you hate Kester?”

  “He ruined Harry, didn’t he? It was as if he murdered him. You remember the way your father was and look at the way he is now.” He stood on the seat again, peered into the tank and was satisfied. Stepping down he dusted his hands on his trousers and moved outside. “Let it be, Hal; let it rest. Christ, hasn’t that sod caused enough trouble?”

  “He’s not a sod to me.”

  “Well, he fucking ought to be.” He looked me up and down again. “He stole you,” he said suddenly. “He stole you and turned you against your father. He knew you were the apple of Harry’s eye and he stole you to give Harry hell.”

  “Bullshit. I was never the apple of Father’s eye. Besides Kester made a point of not turning me against him.”

  “Well, if he didn’t turn you against Harry, why have you been nothing but trouble to Harry ever since Kester died? You answer me that!”

  “I was mixed up.”

  “Damn right you were—and who the hell do you think did the mixing?” shouted Dafydd, and stumped away across the yard without looking back.

  II

  Back in the scullery I brewed myself some coffee, ate an apple in lieu of lunch and sat down at the table in front of the notebook I had bought at Woolworth’s. Then I drank two mugs of coffee and thought for a long time.

  How was I to approach my investigation? Eventually I decided that my first task was to set down on paper the story as I knew it in order to clarify my mind and separate hard facts from mere speculation. Then with my thoughts in meticulous order I would be better able to work out my future moves.

  Pulling my notebook towards me I uncapped my pen and began to write on the waiting page.

  III

  INVESTIGATION INTO Kester’s death: summary of the facts:

  Kester died on May 8th, 1952. He had returned to Gower from Ireland three days previously (May 5th) and had gone straight to my father’s cottage at Rhossili.

  My father and Kester didn’t meet. Richard, who was staying with the Bryn-Davieses at the time, met Kester off the ferry and drove him to Rhossili. I was away at school. During the three days before he died Kester saw the following people in addition to Richard: (I) Evan (2) Bronwen and (3) Gwyneth. Richard, Evan and Bronwen were all interviewed afterwards by the police although only Richard and Evan were called at the inquest. Gwyneth never told anyone but me that she’d seen Kester and at her request I kept quiet about it too. Apparently her parents had begun to be worried about the rumors of his instability and they’d forbidden Gwyneth to see him. She disobeyed. Hence her desire to keep the visit a secret. She didn’t want to get into trouble.

  NOTE: I must reread the detailed account of the inquest. I mustn’t rely on my memory because it’s over ten years since I looked up the report.

  On the aft
ernoon of May 8th my father received a note from Kester asking him to drop in for a drink at some time. My father decided to go over straightaway but Kester was out. It was a fine evening. My father then took a stroll to see if he could intercept Kester. He eventually saw him on the Shipway and realized to his astonishment that Kester was on his way out to the Worm. This was bizarre behavior because the tides were wrong; there was time to get across the Shipway and back but hardly any time to enjoy the Worm on arrival. My father was baffled and became alarmed enough to follow him.

  NOTE: So far my father’s testimony can be verified by independent witnesses. Two tourists returning from the Worm testified that Kester and my father were a quarter of an hour apart on the Shipway.

  When my father reached the Inner Head he waited, thinking Kester was bound to come back into view at any moment to begin the return journey, but Kester didn’t show up and after a minute my father, unable to stand the suspense, went on down the path and around the bend onto the southern flank of the Inner Head. He then realized that Kester had planned to be cut off by the tide because although Kester was visible he was far away by the Middle Head. My father was then faced with a dilemma. If he went on he’d be marooned on the Worm overnight. If he went back he’d be leaving Kester in what might well have been a thoroughly disturbed state of mind. My father, not unnaturally, was reluctant to be marooned. Telling himself that Kester was being eccentric but not necessarily demented, my father then made the decision to go back.

  NOTE: This is my father’s testimony as I remember it in the report. My father and I have never discussed this privately. The testimony is unsupported by witnesses but supported by his cast-iron alibi which proved conclusively that he did turn back and recross the Shipway.

  My father reached the headland shortly after eight that night and the Shipway had begun to go under. Kester was thus left marooned on the Worm. My father returned to the cottage, and when he arrived he found Dafydd replacing a defective washer on one of the kitchen taps; they talked together for a while.