The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  “That’s true. But I’m afraid I’m not very good at believing in freak waves, especially as Kester would never have risked crossing the Shipway until it was quite safe.”

  “I’m not very good at believing in suicide. Listen, Gwyneth. Both Evan and Richard are certain that Kester either had begun or was about to begin a brand-new book. Now, can you honestly see Kester committing suicide when he was on a big creative high?”

  She was silent, and as I realized there was something she wasn’t telling me I felt the dread tighten my muscles once more. Her striking face with its powerful sensual mouth was in shadow. She looked away.

  “Tell me again,” I said at last, “exactly what happened when you called at the cottage on the morning of his death.”

  Still she was silent. Then she made an effort and turned to face me.

  “I thought I could wait till the weekend to see him but I couldn’t. I cut school and cycled over to Rhossili. I wondered if he’d be working but he wasn’t—he was about to go out for a walk. He seemed pleased to see me, but at the same time he was preoccupied and finally he tried to leave. I wanted to go with him on the walk but he said as nicely as possible that he had a lot on his mind and he wanted to be alone to think. I got a bit upset … stupid of me … I suppose I was in rather an emotional state; it was just so wonderful to see him again and I couldn’t bear it when he seemed to be brushing me off. … Then he—well, he was nice. He stayed a little longer after all and when I was better he gave me some chocolate and told me to come back at the weekend with Trevor.

  “I asked him if he’d be working in the morning and he said, ‘Oh no, there’s no question of that,’ and that was when I got the impression he had no literary plans at that time. I remember noticing he hadn’t taken the cover off his typewriter.

  “Then I asked him if I could come alone without Trevor but he said, ‘I think a group’s more fun, don’t you?’ and so I had to tell him that I didn’t think Trevor would come as my parents didn’t want us to see him—Kester—anymore. He was very upset by that. It was awful. He said, ‘Why? What are they getting at?’ and then I became upset again too because of course I couldn’t tell him they thought he was mentally unstable. But I flung my arms around him and I kissed him and I said, ‘I trust you and I love you,’ and I showed him the locket he’d given me, Anna’s locket, and I said, ‘I wear this every day in memory of you,’ and then …” She stopped.

  Nothing happened. The churchyard was still. I didn’t move. She didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. She didn’t breathe. Time was suspended for a long moment before she said rapidly: “It was frightful. He pushed me away from him and burst into tears.”

  I breathed again. So did she. To beat back the nausea I concentrated on saying: “You never told me that before.”

  “No. Well, it’s not really the sort of thing one reveals easily, is it? Kester was our hero. Heroes don’t burst into tears when little girls of twelve declare their undying love.”

  “Right. What happened next?”

  “He pulled himself together, apologized, had a shot of scotch and said he was under great strain but he’d be better soon. Then he said he really did want to go for his walk and so we parted. By that time I was glad to escape. He’d rather frightened me.”

  We went on sitting there. I tried to imagine the note I was going to have to write but my mind went blank.

  “He was a good decent man,” said Gwyneth at last. “It was all right. But—”

  “Yes?”

  “—but I think he was a bit unbalanced. Now that I’m an adult I can see that. He lived in a fantasy world, didn’t he, writing his books, playing with us children … and who’s to say where fantasy ended and reality began? Did he say he had a new book to write? Maybe that was just to impress people. Did he act as if he were on a big creative high? Maybe he was just striking a bold pose. I saw no high and heard about no book. All I remember now are the tears.” She swallowed. It took her a moment to go on but finally she said: “I think he’d reached the end of the road and somehow I was the last straw. You know we said to each other that we couldn’t think of one good reason why he would have left us? Well, I can think of a good reason now why he might have chosen to leave me. I think he loved me and was terrified he might do something wrong. I think he killed himself to protect me. It was suicide, Hal, I just know it was suicide …” And she broke down and began to cry.

  XIII

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, but I remembered Pam talking of the suicidal motive which she had refused to divulge. I put my arm around Gwyneth. She stiffened. I withdrew. I didn’t have a handkerchief to offer her so I just sat there helplessly while she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “I just don’t believe it,” I said, “and you mustn’t believe it either.”

  “Oh, if only you could persuade me—”

  “Okay, let me try.” I was appalled to think she had been secretly blaming herself for years for Kester’s death. I saw clearly now that she was shackled by guilt to his memory and I knew I had to do everything in my power to smash those shackles and set her free. “Gwyneth, Kester had sides to his personality that we never saw. Your theory rests on the premise that he was a burnt-out case but the impression I’ve got after talking to all the people who knew him best was that he was a strong man, much stronger than we ever realized, and not only very durable but very determined. Now, he may have been abnormally fond of you. Lewis Carroll was abnormally fond of his Alice, but I’ve read about Carroll and there’s no doubt nothing unsavory ever happened between them—he just wanted to marry her when she was grown up. Maybe Kester wanted to marry you too when you were grown up. After all, he fell in love with Anna when she was only fourteen. Obviously he always liked very young girls.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Wait, hear me out. The point about Kester is that he would have had the strength and determination to wait. He proved it. He waited over three years for Anna, and I think he’d have waited even longer for you. It seems to me sex wasn’t particularly important to him—no one’s ever suggested he had mistresses, so presumably he found he could live without them, and if you add all this up the inference would be that he could keep any abnormal affection for you well in control. I know the way he burst into tears suggests his control was weakening, but in fact all that those tears prove is that he was feeling overwrought—and not necessarily about you. It must have been very touching when you declared your faith in him like that. If he was strung up about something else that sort of moving declaration could well have triggered him into tears, and don’t forget he was notorious for being emotional. This scene may have been off-key but I don’t think it was sinister and I certainly don’t think it was a prelude to a suicide for which you can be held responsible.”

  She thought over what I had said. When I finally had the nerve to take her hand in mine she whispered, “Thanks. I feel better,” and we drifted down the path away from the grave. “All right,” I heard her say evenly, “perhaps he didn’t commit suicide because of me. Your argument’s certainly convincing. Perhaps after all it was because without Anna and Oxmoon he couldn’t write and felt he had nothing left to live for.”

  “I’m absolutely one hundred percent certain you’re wrong about that. He’d adjusted to Anna’s loss. He had a new book to write. And there’s even the possibility, I’ve discovered, that he thought he could get Oxmoon back. No, I still think he had everything to live for.”

  “Yes, but—” She stopped dead in the shadow of the tower. “—Hal, if he didn’t die by accident and he didn’t commit suicide, what’s left? The inquest made it clear he wasn’t murdered.”

  “Maybe he’s still alive.” We looked back at the grave. Then I laughed and said, “No, this isn’t The Third Man and Kester isn’t Harry Lime. He’s dead all right.”

  “Not for me,” she said. “Never for me.”

  I looked at her. I was still Saint George but I knew I was in retreat before the dragon an
d the maiden was still shackled to her stake.

  “You don’t have to feel guilty about him anymore, Gwyneth, can’t you see?” I said, but even as I spoke I was realizing I could hardly expect her to slough off an entrenched emotional attitude instantly. My words of reassurance would take time—perhaps a long time—to bite deep into her mind, and even then she would probably need someone like Pam to set her squarely on the road to freedom. “Come on,” I said abruptly. “Let’s forget him. I’ll drive you home.”

  Halfway up the lane to the Llewellyns’ farm she said, “You’re driving like a maniac. For God’s sake slow down.”

  “You really did love him, didn’t you?” I had just begun to realize I was vilely upset. I was suffering some sort of annihilating reaction to her disclosures in the churchyard, and although I knew rationally that I couldn’t expect her to abandon Kester at once I was so overcome with chaotic feelings that rational thoughts no longer had any power over me.

  “Of course I really loved him,” she said, “and I still do.”

  “So all that bloody do-it-yourself psychology got you bloody nowhere! You’re still a virgin, aren’t you?”

  “What the bloody hell’s that got to do with you?”

  “Just about bloody everything. I want you, I’ve always wanted you, I’ve never been able to get you out of my mind, I’ve lost count of the girls I’ve had but no one’s ever measured up to you, no one’s ever recaptured the magic of all our wonderful days at Oxmoon—”

  “Did you pop some pills when I wasn’t looking? You sound stoned out of your mind! Look, if you don’t slow down I’ll bloody well pull up the hand brake—”

  I slowed down. The open gates of the farmhouse drive lay ahead in the dusk. I almost sheared the wall as I swung the car into the yard.

  “Meet me again. Name the time, name the place, name anything you bloody like—”

  “I thought you’d given up sex! That little vagary didn’t last long, did it?”

  “Marry me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  I slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a halt and skidded on the manure. Gwyneth got out. I got out. The doors slammed.

  “That bastard Kester—”

  “Shut up! Don’t you dare talk of him like that!”

  “He was a magician! He dazzled you! You’re in love with a magic myth!”

  “Let me go—you’re hurting me—”

  The back door opened and little Caitlin rushed out, seventeen years old, shining-eyed and innocent, my latest record album in her arms.

  “Okay, turn on the sexy smile,” said Gwyneth to me as she wrenched herself free, “and let’s see how the great star handles his loyal fans.”

  Caitlin skimmed across the yard. She wore a short cotton dress and flimsy sandals. Her hair looked as if it had just been ironed.

  “Oh, Hal—sorry to interrupt—please excuse me—I just wondered if—well, could you possibly …”

  Reaching for the album, I found my pen and uncapped it. “Gwyneth—”

  “I’m sorry, Hal, I do wish you all the best with your investigations and I’m glad we did meet again, but—”

  “Give me your telephone number.”

  “No.”

  “Ah, come on!” I was writing on the album’s sleeve: Kiss me, Cait! Lots of luck—HAL GODWIN.

  “If you’re not interested in platonic friendship then I’m not interested in handing out my phone number.”

  “Okay, forget it. I’ve got enough hang-ups of my own without taking on yours as well.”

  She walked away with a shrug and as I watched her disappear into the house I realized I was still holding the album. The child was no longer shining-eyed. She was looking after Gwyneth despondently and as I realized how tough it was for her to have such a sexy sister, I suddenly saw how I could be kind.

  “Caitlin.”

  She jumped as if she’d been shot. “Yes?”

  “Can you help me?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “I’m working on a project and tomorrow I’ll need someone to help me. Can you make some excuse to your family and get away for the day?”

  “Oh yes, easily!”

  The back door crashed open again as Jasper Llewellyn emerged like some neo-Victorian paterfamilias. All he needed was a horsewhip.

  “Caitlin!” he bellowed before shouting something in the Welsh I couldn’t understand.

  “Coming!” shouted Caitlin in English. To me she whispered: “Where and when?”

  “Penhale churchyard. Nine thirty.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Wear gym shoes. We’re going to the Worm.”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t tell your parents.”

  “Never!” She looked astonished that I should think her capable of such an idiocy and skimmed away again with my album tucked lovingly against her breast.

  I got into my car and drove away.

  XIV

  NOTES ON GWYNETH:

  Of course I don’t think he ever actually did anything to her. Of course I don’t. But it’s as if he did.

  BLOODY HELL.

  Keep your cool. Draw a nice line of pretty asterisks. And start again.

  NOTES ON GWYNETH:

  Gwyneth convinced me that the possibility of an accident was nil. I convinced her that the possibility of suicide was nil. So there we are. Except that we’re not. I can’t think straight about this. But I must. Keep trying.

  Kester was strung up when Gwyneth saw him but that was probably because by that time he had sent the note to my father and was psyching himself up for a gruelling interview. If Sian’s right, he could well have been about to demand Oxmoon’s return. And obviously he hadn’t started his new novel because he was too strung up. That all hangs together. But where do I go from there?

  No accident. No suicide.

  Right. Time for another line of asterisks.

  VERDICT: Of course it must have been an accident, and tomorrow at the Worm I’m sure to see the solution Gwyneth and Trevor missed. Maybe I can even manage to believe in the freak wave. After all, freak waves are well-documented phenomena. They do happen.

  But not to the world’s expert on the Shipway in calm spring weather.

  XV

  I stopped writing because it was too dark to see properly and my eyes were hurting. I was parked on the village green at Penhale and around me I could see the lighted windows of the cottages and hear the sound of rock music vibrating in the parish hall. The new vicar had the reputation for being trendy. The youth club was evidently in full swing.

  I drove back to Oxmoon. It was a very dark night. I felt on the brink of something I knew instinctively would be dangerous to analyze, but I told myself everything would be all right so long as I just stuck to the facts. I felt strung tight as a trip wire.

  When I reached the stable yard I halted the car, switched off the lights and sat watching the bright window of my father’s room. I was reminded of a poem by Emily Brontë. Kester had been a great admirer of hers and had often read her poems aloud to us. I tried to remember the one about the candle burning in the window for the traveler, but all I could recall was a fragment of her final and perhaps most moving poem.

  “No coward soul is mine …”

  But I couldn’t remember how it went on. I could only remember that she’d been facing a great ordeal and drumming up her courage.

  I got out of the car and paused in the dark. The curtain of my father’s window moved slightly and was still. He was waiting for me. And I was coming. I walked steadily across the yard and just as I was raising my hand to ring the bell the door opened and my father asked me to come in.

  XVI

  “I heard the car,” he said. “Come into my room and tell me how you’ve been getting on.”

  “Okay. Is Pam out?”

  “No, in the bath. If you want to cross-examine me without my watchdog in attendance this is your golden opportunity.”

  “I’m not intereste
d in being hostile. But I’d certainly be grateful if you could clarify one or two minor points.”

  “Of course. As I said before, I want to do all I can to help you.”

  That conversation took us to his room which as usual was in a state of chronic disorganization. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke, and as soon as the door was closed my father poured himself some scotch into a tooth mug.

  “Are you supposed to drink, Father? For God’s sake don’t overdose on alcohol and barbiturates.”

  “I haven’t had any pills today. I thought alcohol would be more fun.”

  “What about your skin?”

  “What the hell, it could hardly get much worse.” After a mouthful of scotch he swung to face me. “Well? What did you make of the inquest report?”

  “I thought you were a brilliant witness. But you were lucky with the coroner, weren’t you? He seemed to look very benignly at your Old Harrovian tie.”

  My father laughed and embarked on the ritual of lighting a cigarette. His hands were quite steady. I wondered how long he had been drinking. “The coroner was no problem, I admit,” he said, snapping shut the lighter and reaching for the tooth mug again. “But don’t forget Declan was sitting in court. I didn’t realize he was saving his fire for the Bryn-Davies lawsuit and I kept expecting him to interrupt at any minute to stage some lethal scene.”

  “In that case your performance was even more remarkable than I thought it was. Father—”

  “Yes?” He responded so fast to my hesitation that I knew I wasn’t the only one in that room who was strung tight as a trip wire.

  “—I hesitate to ask this, but did you lie? Not about the main facts—I’m quite prepared to accept that your evidence was basically true, but was there any point at all, even the smallest point, which you omitted or distorted—perhaps in order to simplify matters for the jury?”

  “Oh yes,” said my father without a moment’s hesitation. “We all knew the importance of saving paper in those days but I never actually gave the servants lectures on the subject. I just slipped that statement in for good effect.”