The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “Yes, they were an odd pair all right—people talked so much romantic drivel about my parents’ marriage when it finally happened, but what the hell do you think it was like trying to live with a middle-aged couple who were so taken up with each other that they weren’t plugged into reality at all? Grand passion isn’t designed to incorporate a bunch of kids, that’s the unromantic truth—Christ, the rows over our education! However, my parents have nothing to do with Harry and Kester, have they, although as a matter of fact I often wonder, looking back, what effect my parents’ catastrophic mess of a love affair had on those two—I think that grand passion affected more people adversely than my parents could ever bring themselves to admit. … But that’s life, isn’t it? Unless you live like a hermit, you can’t help affecting other people in some way or other, and hell, I was very fond of my parents really, they just drove me up the wall, that’s all, but most people feel that way about their parents, don’t they? I know you feel that way about Harry. …

  “Ah, yes, Harry—I was going to tell you how good Harry was to me when I was a kid. Yes, he talked to me, he held out a helping hand when I was lonely and insecure and just plain bloody miserable, he was a good brother to me, he listened, he cared, he was there when I needed him. He was a fine man, Hal, the best. And yet all the time up at Oxmoon, living in the house Harry should have had, living the kind of life Harry deserved to lead was this creep, this phony, this bloody hypocrite talking about beauty, truth, art and peace—my God, all that crap about pacifism! Kester was no pacifist! He was as tough and aggressive as they come. He had it in for Harry; he went after him with no holds barred—do you remember how Kester grabbed Little Oxmoon and Martinscombe? That was a naked act of aggression if ever I saw one. Okay, maybe Kester did have a case for annexing them—God knows what the legal position was on that land—but the point was that Kester wanted to ruin Harry and drive him out of Gower. He was ruthless and unscrupulous, he stopped at nothing—

  “What was that, old chap? How do I reconcile that picture of Kester with Kester the pathetic old has-been who jumped off the Worm and drowned himself? Okay, good question, but it’s not so hard to answer. Kester was nuts, that’s all—nuts enough to want to destroy Harry and nuts enough to want to destroy himself later. Just because he could be tough doesn’t mean he was incapable of cracking up. After all, look at your father. He was the toughest guy in Gower and look at the way he cracked up! But Harry was a good decent guy who had lousy luck and went to pieces whereas Kester was in pieces to start with, and every time he put himself together he was mayhem on wheels. That’s the truth, Hal. That’s the way it really was. He was a nut case who suicided. What else can I possibly say?”

  IV

  NOTES ON GERRY: He could give no concrete reason why Kester should have committed suicide. Did Kester in fact suffer from a clinical depression which could have given rise to manic mood swings? It’s a convenient theory for explaining the suicide but it rings false. However this may be because Gerry’s personality is so synthetic that nearly everything he says does ring false. He was sincere when he talked about Father, though, and I think he was sincere when he talked of Kester as being ruthless and unscrupulous.

  What do I make of his story that Kester grabbed the Martinscombe lands in order to drive my father out of Gower? That bears little relation to the story Kester told me in one of the last letters he wrote to me at school before Father stopped the correspondence. Kester said he’d found out that legally the lands belonged to him and that he’d reluctantly decided to reclaim them as he needed every extra penny he could get in order to cope with rising costs and taxation. This seemed reasonable enough—a tough break for my father, of course, but Kester was only claiming what was his by right.

  But now think again. Kester tries to grab the Martinscombe lands—and what happens directly afterwards? My father gets Oxmoon, all of it, the lot, including the disputed property. Was it given or did he grab it? If Kester’s trying to grab lands at one moment why should he give the whole lot away the next? Can this merely be explained away by saying he was a crackpot at the mercy of manic mood swings? No, extortion’s the answer—and Declan’s evidence begins to seem just a little more than an Irish fairy tale.

  Gerry denied the extortion theory, but he would, wouldn’t he? If extortion existed and he, as my father’s lawyer, knew of it, of course he’d have to lie to the back teeth to say it never existed—and of course he’d have to back up my father over the suicide theory. Never forget that if extortion exists it gives my father a motive for murder.

  VERDICT: Not to be trusted, but his picture of Kester as a tough man who cracked up is intriguing. He made Kester and my father seem like mirror images of each other, although that’s ridiculous because I know they were radically dissimilar. Or do I? I’m tempted to wonder if I know anything at all, but I mustn’t get discouraged just because Gerry proved a slippery unsatisfactory witness.

  Soldier on.

  V

  Lance lived in the comfortable Swansea house which had once belonged to my grandfather and which Lance had inherited after Bronwen’s death. Evan hadn’t needed it; Gerry, who preferred plush modern apartments, hadn’t wanted it; Sian had already been married with a home of her own. Like Vershinin in The Three Sisters, Lance had a wife and two little girls. Probably he hoped to have more children in time. The large house suited him.

  His little girls were long since in bed and his wife had tactfully retired to the living room, to watch television, but Lance and I were lingering over our coffee at the kitchen table. The kitchen was as warm and friendly as it had been when Bronwen was alive, and although at first I had attributed this impression to Jean’s good cooking and the relaxed nature of the company, I was beginning to sense that Lance was reminding me of his mother, mysteriously re-creating that atmosphere of intuitive sympathy which I could remember from my visits to the house as a child.

  Lance was only ten years my senior, tall and thin, lanky and bespectacled, casual and nonchalant, an engineer who dabbled with inventions. He struck me as being a profoundly contented man, and despite his vagueness it occurred to me that evening that he was a much better-balanced personality than Gerry, kind, sensitive and unselfish. I remember thinking as I embarked on my set speech that he would be a better witness too, more perspicacious, more truthful and possibly more detached. He hadn’t been close to either Kester or my father.

  “… so that’s the position, Lance. Now tell me honestly: what do you think was going on?”

  “God only knows, Hal,” said Lance, shattering my assumption that he would have a clear-cut opinion to offer. “I could never make up my mind.”

  VI

  “There was something weird going on,” said Lance, “that’s for sure. But I don’t know exactly what it was. In retrospect I think the weirdest feature of the story is that as soon as my father died those two men went straight to pieces. That seems to prove they were so neurotic about each other that without a strong man keeping the peace between them their paranoia at once rocketed out of control. … No, I’m not exaggerating. They really were paranoid about each other. For instance, after Anna died Harry bust his way into Oxmoon to offer condolences and Kester wanted to kill him because he thought Harry had come to gloat. How paranoid can you get! And then there was a bizarre scene in 1949 when Harry and Thomas both thought Kester meant to humiliate them before the family and they refused to turn up at a big Oxmoon lunch party. Nothing happened, of course—Harry was imagining the whole thing, but even my father was in a hell of a sweat at the thought of Kester creating some thoroughly unpleasant scene. … You didn’t hear about any of this? Well, of course you were pretty young then. But there was a long sequence of hostilities between Kester and Harry, although in the end it was Thomas who came to be the real problem to both those two. Harry couldn’t stand him and Kester couldn’t stand him either—apparently Thomas had insulted Anna back in 1939 and Kester never forgot. … No, I wasn’t surprised when Kester tried to fire T
homas on the night of the car smash—nor was I surprised to learn that Thomas had got roaring drunk and crashed up to Oxmoon to make a scene. Given the people involved, anyone could have anticipated that particular script. But afterwards …

  “Well, this is where we get to Declan Kinsella, isn’t it? I know his story seems implausible but the truth is it’s not impossible—Kester could well have killed Thomas in a drunken brawl, and if Harry had been there and was perhaps involved in some way which we don’t know about, it’s not beyond belief that he could have taken part in a cover-up. I know in retrospect we can say it would have been an idiotic thing to do, but people do do idiotic things in the heat of the moment when they’re under stress … yes, I can see why Declan thought he could capitalize on that story. I don’t suppose it happened just as he said it did, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if his story had a factual basis—the real five-star liars of this world always use the truth as far as they possibly can. … Declan a five-star liar? Oh no, that wasn’t what I meant at all. After all, it wasn’t Declan’s story, was it? It was Kester’s.

  “You see, Hal, there’s only one way you can satisfactorily explain the evidence of Declan Kinsella, and that’s to say he was a front for Kester’s paranoia. Declan was in his own way a distinguished man. I don’t believe he’d have deliberately perjured himself in the witness box; I think he believed in the truth of every word he was saying, but where did his facts come from? Well, he had only one source, didn’t he: Kester. And Kester was a writer. He’d spent years and years perfecting the art of storytelling and only a practiced storyteller could have hoped to deceive a cynical politician like Declan.

  “What makes me think Declan got the extortion story straight from the horse’s mouth? Oh God, Hal, we all knew that for a fact! Has no one ever told you about the great scene at Oxmoon when Harry called a family council to explain his takeover and Declan gave a dress rehearsal of his performance in the Bryn-Davies lawsuit? Well, no, on second thoughts perhaps that’s not so surprising—it was such a vile scene that I think we all tacitly agreed not to talk about it afterwards, least of all to the child you were at the time. But Declan accused Harry of extortion, and as Kester was at that time alive in Dublin, the inference was that Declan had been briefed by him. And yet …

  “And yet that doesn’t actually prove anything, does it? Not when you remember that Kester was a neurotic, paranoid about Harry. Kester might well have felt so ashamed that he’d given Oxmoon away because he couldn’t cope that he invented the story of extortion in order to present himself to his brother in a less humiliating light. …

  “No, I’m not trying to protect you. I’m just telling you I don’t know whether Declan was speaking Kester’s truth or Kester’s lies; I’m just telling you I don’t know how or why Kester died; I’m just telling you I don’t know whether Harry extorted Oxmoon or not but even if he did that still doesn’t prove he murdered Kester. In fact I don’t think you can prove anything here, Hal—I don’t think we’ll ever know what really happened, no matter how hard you play the private eye. … And by the way, aren’t you being rather romantic, acting the crusader on the white horse in pursuit of the Holy Grail of Truth? And aren’t you being just a little dishonest? This cold dispassionate inquisitorial air is an act. You care about those two men. If you didn’t care you wouldn’t be here, asking all these questions. Don’t deceive yourself, Hal, or you’ll wind up crucifying yourself over this. …

  “Okay, so you’ve been on the cross and now you’re trying to cut yourself down by working out who’s the hero and who’s the villain of this story, but that’s another false trail, because it’s just not that kind of story. If you want a really way-out opinion, I’d say they were both mad. I think they were in the grip of some peculiar psychiatric condition—perhaps even an occult condition—for which there’s no name. I think their relationship was sinister in the extreme and so lethal that it resulted in the destruction of their personalities. Stay away from it, Hal, let it be. I’m sorry I can’t help you, I’ve done my best, but I really have nothing more to say …”

  VII

  NOTES ON LANCE:

  I’m tempted to regard the interview as a failure since Lance when pressed for a verdict could only serve up a whimsical piece of mysticism reminiscent of Bronwen on an off day, but in fact despite his refusal to commit himself to any rational opinion he did let fall some interesting information.

  He revealed that my father and Kester had been at loggerheads for far longer than I realized. And more important, he confirmed that even my grandfather believed, on the occasion of this 1949 lunch party, that Kester was capable of thoroughly unpleasant behavior. This backs up Gerry’s opinion.

  Lance confirmed something I thought was non-proven: that Declan was talking of extortion while Kester was still alive. It wasn’t just a story he invented for the Bryn-Davies lawsuit after Kester’s death. Lance rightly pointed out that this still doesn’t make the story true but it does mean I must stop protecting myself by writing it off as an Irish fairy tale.

  Lance stated that Thomas’s death, which is at the heart of the extortion mystery, followed an extended sequence of hostilities between Kester and my father. I didn’t know this before. Nor did I know that Thomas joined them in forming a triangle of men all hostile to one another. This is unquestionably sinister and makes the possibility of a lethal termination of the triangle much more plausible.

  VERDICT: This interview enabled me to see various random events of the past in an interesting and suggestive perspective. Lance said he couldn’t help me, but in fact I feel I’m further on. I certainly don’t believe his wild assertion of double insanity, but now I can see a nightmare taking shape, the nightmare of mutual loathing periodically swinging out of control. And when two people loathe each other to such a neurotic extent, then surely anything becomes possible—blackmail, land grabbing, the lot.

  The past is getting murkier. If I were neurotic myself I’d feel that at any moment the lights were about to go out, the ghosts were about to walk and the horrors were about to begin. But I’m not neurotic and I’m not afraid of ghosts. I don’t believe in them. Soldier on.

  VIII

  Before leaving Lance and making the short journey east to Cardiff I phoned Evan to make sure he was at home and on arrival I found him alone in the vast kitchen of his Victorian rectory. His wife was out counseling at the social-services center. Evan was brewing tea, listening to the radio and jotting down notes for a sermon. Six books ranging from an Agatha Christie novel to a critique on Descartes lay open on the table to aid his quest for inspiration.

  Evan was forty-two, thin and scanty-haired like Lance, but without Lance’s air of tranquillity. He had a much more forceful personality, and the impression of force was heightened by the clergyman’s tricks he had acquired since his ordination, the clarity of speech, the firmness in expressing his opinions, the unobtrusive skill in handling people who could be awkward, demanding or just plain dull. However despite his stylish clerical manners he always seemed to me to be an unlikely clergyman. He was the kind of restless idealist who could hardly be content indefinitely with the same theological surroundings, and he fancied himself an expert on the more esoteric reaches of the Christian faith. He had performed a notorious exorcism which had landed him in trouble with his bishop. He had dabbled in the laying on of hands. His routine experiments with ecumenism had turned into radical flirtations with Rome. As I grew older I saw him not just as a rebel but as a complex man trying not altogether successfully to submerge his complexity within the confines of orthodox religion, and I had occasionally wondered if later he might drop out, perhaps run for Parliament, start a business, become a television personality. He had that unfocused dynamism which could have made him a success in any field that gave him the chance to project his personality. Although he resembled Lance physically in some ways it was easier to believe he was Gerry’s brother. He had Gerry’s charm without Gerry’s vulgarity, Gerry’s drive without Gerry’s sh
ady amoral streak.

  “I know what you said at the inquest,” I said to him when I had explained the purpose of my visit. “But I want to make quite sure that you were saying what you really thought.”

  “Certainly I was!” said Evan at once and added firmly: “It was an accident, Hal. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Kester would never have committed suicide.”

  IX

  “You want me to recap the evidence I gave at the inquest?” said Evan. “No, of course I don’t mind, why should I, I’m only glad you want to talk it over frankly. It always worried me that you never felt able to discuss it before. …

  “Okay, here goes. I saw Kester on the day before he died when I took over to Rhossili his extremely sophisticated radio which I’d been guarding and enjoying while he’d been in Ireland. When I arrived at the cottage I found Kester in magnificent spirits. He said giving up Oxmoon was the smartest thing he’d ever done and that because he’d been relieved of the burden of looking after it he was now enjoying a period of unprecedented creativity. Mark you, I’m not sure whether he’d actually started this new novel—I never asked Kester about his work unless he volunteered information—but I definitely got the impression that if he hadn’t started a masterpiece he was just about to begin one. His whole attitude, you understand, was quite incompatible with suicide. He was buoyant, excited and radiant.

  “Now the coroner asked me if I felt Kester’s mood could have been some form of manic mood swing compatible with a serious depressive illness. I’m not a doctor so my opinion is of only minimal value, as Harry pointed out to me later with perfect truth, but in my opinion it wasn’t a manic mood swing. The suicide school of thought, of course, says that it was. However at least I gave the jury their opportunity to file their verdict of accident.