The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  Pam stopped knitting and regarded me sympathetically. “What makes you so sure you’re mad?”

  “I blew my mind.”

  “Uh-huh. How? Or would you rather not talk about it?”

  But words streamed out of me as I discovered that by talking I could keep my mind together. Pam listened and made what I recognized as neutral comments except that they didn’t seem neutral anymore. I had never realized that words like “I see” and noises like “Hm” could exude such infinite understanding.

  “… and so as I heard the voice of a dead man,” I concluded at last, “that must mean I’m crazy.”

  “Hm, Tell me … why are you so convinced it was Kester’s voice?”

  “Oh, there was no question about it. He had a deeper voice than my father’s—he sounded just like my grandfather.”

  “Then why couldn’t it have been your grandfather speaking? What made you so sure you were hearing Kester?”

  “He used the words ‘Hold fast, stand firm.’ That was a great catchphrase of Kester’s.”

  “But Kester hardly had the monopoly of it—I’ve heard Harry trot out those words more than once, and perhaps your grandfather trotted them out too.”

  “Well, I … yes, as a matter of fact I think he did. But do you mean to say—”

  “You still haven’t explained why you were so sure it was Kester speaking.”

  “Well, I … well, he … Pam, he was there, I know he was, he was in the room, I could feel him, the air was like lead, it was weighted with his presence. And then he seemed to emanate from my father. I looked at my father and saw Kester—not physically; physically they were dissimilar, but Kester’s spirit was there. My father made this remark about how his life had merged with Kester’s, and then of course I saw at once—”

  “Of course. You were in a highly disturbed and emotional state. All you needed was a suggestion.”

  “But Pam, it was more than that, I swear it! Kester was in that room, I’m absolutely convinced he was—”

  “Okay,” said Pam laconically. “He was there. So what?”

  I stared at her. She’d hooked me. I was so stunned by the question that all terror was wiped from my mind.

  “What do you mean, for God’s sake?”

  “Well,” said Pam reasonably, “if he was there, surely he would have been benign to you? He loved you; you were like a son to him. Why should he have wanted to frighten you out of your mind? Or to put it another way, what made you think that he’d be so angry with you? Why were you so terrified of seeing him?”

  “But don’t you see,” I said unsteadily, the words tumbling from my mouth, “I’d turned against him, I’d been disloyal, I’d called him the villain of the story—Kester who loved me …” But I couldn’t go on. Tears were streaming down my face again. That was when I knew how mad I was. I wasn’t mad just because I was crying in front of a woman. I was mad because I didn’t care that I was crying in front of a woman. I felt tears were the only conceivable release from an intolerable grief. I wondered dimly how I was going to stop. I didn’t want to stop but I had to hear what Pam was going to say next and I knew she wouldn’t speak till I was quiet. Curiosity won. I stopped crying and waited.

  Eventually she said without emphasis: “Yes. You were feeling guilty. You sat there with your father and the two of you generated this colossal miasma of guilt. No wonder the air seemed like lead! That sort of atmosphere would make any lungs function abnormally.”

  I was conscious of being on the brink of a huge relief, but I couldn’t quite believe it. I whispered: “What you’re really saying is that I hallucinated.”

  “That’s a very emotional word, and like all emotional words it can be very misleading. It’s so often used to describe reactions that have little to do with its clinical definition.”

  “But I heard his voice! Don’t people who hallucinate hear voices?”

  “Well, if you’d heard the voice of Napoleon or Queen Victoria I confess I’d be slightly perturbed, but I think Kester’s voice seems natural enough for you to hear in the circumstances. Your father used a phrase that reminded you of him. Well, why not? They were cousins, brought up by the same man who you tell me also used that phrase. They probably had a lot of tricks of speech in common, and perhaps at that crucial moment when he was under great stress your father’s voice was lower than usual with emotion; we don’t always speak in exactly the same timbre. Also don’t forget that you yourself were under great stress and in your guilty terror you were highly suggestible. Quite honestly, Hal, I think this is all very normal and I don’t see the need to resort to emotional explanations.”

  When I could speak I said, “I want so much to believe you. But Pam, how do you explain this … this metaphysical nightmare, this … this terrifying relationship between my father and Kester?”

  “Oh that,” said Pam, picking up her knitting again. “Oh, that’s all very simple, no problem there. I could give you a rational explanation of their relationship without batting an eyelid.”

  All I could say was “Christ Almighty.” I gazed at her with the most profound admiration. “You don’t believe in paranormal phenomena?” I said cautiously at last.

  “I wouldn’t say that. I believe there are different ways of looking at a given situation and none of those ways need necessarily be invalid. But I do think the classification ‘paranormal’ should be reserved for those situations which can’t be explained rationally, and in my opinion this case just doesn’t fall into that category.”

  I sat up in bed, punched the pillows into a better shape behind me and said, “Explain.”

  “Certainly. You can dress this case up to the nines in occult language and make it out to be quite a ghost story, but in fact all that’s really going on here is an extreme case of sibling rivalry aggravated by some very malign coincidences.”

  I saw salvation. “Okay, I’ll buy it. Let’s have your professional analysis.”

  She smiled at me. Then she put aside her knitting again, settled herself more comfortably in her chair and said: “Very well. This, as a modern Chaucer might say, is The Psychiatrist’s Tale. …”

  XIII

  “This is the story,” said Pam, eminently rational, utterly sane, “of two boys, not overpoweringly alike but with three vital things in common: an artistic inclination, the background of Oxmoon and your grandfather John Godwin—and let me say straightaway that there’s the man I’d like to put in deep analysis! A classic example of someone who says Do as I say but don’t do as I do. ‘Do the done thing!’ he says as he lives openly with his mistress! No wonder those boys got mixed up.

  “Now, what are we to make of John? In some ways he cuts an attractive figure, and certainly in these days of sexual revolution and blurred class distinctions we’re not going to faint with horror at his private life. But the point about John is that he had hang-ups which this unorthodox private life underlined and even exaggerated; if he’d merely spent fifty years living with your grandmother Blanche I doubt if those hang-ups would have stood out like a bunch of sore thumbs, but as it was, the deeper he waded into immorality the more obsessed he became with his two favorite psychological occupations: doing the done thing and drawing the line.

  “Now, normal people like you and me don’t agonize much over this sort of thing—we just go out and do what we instinctively feel is right or wrong and that’s that. But for John Godwin, life is apparently not so simple. Here you have a divided man, a man who comes on strong as a conservative moralist but who spends years of his adult life behaving like a freewheeling radical. Both roles seem equally right to him but at the same time he can argue that both, for various reasons, are equally wrong. Now, this is the sort of moral conflict which can drive people not necessarily round the bend but certainly into a disturbed emotional state, and according to Harry the one subject that was taboo in his father’s presence was insanity.

  “Was Bronwen the cause of this troubled state of mind? I doubt it. I see Bronwen as the catal
yst, splitting open deep fissures that already existed in his personality. I haven’t sufficient information so it’s impossible to explain John comprehensively to you, but I should very much like to know more about his relationship with his parents and with that grandmother in the asylum—and indeed more about his whole childhood at Oxmoon. The impression is of a man obsessed with keeping himself in check—a man irrationally frightened of losing control of his mind. Thus ‘doing the done thing’ and ‘drawing the line’—or trying to—was his way of feeling safe, of staying sane. Mind you, I’m not saying he wasn’t basically a good man but what I am saying is that he wasn’t a simple one.

  “Anyway he was the vital father figure in those two boys’ lives and they picked up all his off-key vibrations with the result that they too became obsessed with the need to do the done thing and cut a conventional figure as an English gentleman—a pattern of behavior which in fact had very little to do with their highly individual personalities. So you wind up with two boys facing the same problem: how do they fit themselves into this artificial but apparently highly desirable mold?

  “Well, Kester appears to wriggle out of the dilemma. He has the advantage that John’s his uncle, not his father, and he has this mother who backs him up. It’s hard for me to form much of an impression of Kester’s parents, but the father seems a shadowy figure, no doubt prevented by his illness from being much involved with his son. However the mother’s a strong personality and she’s not afraid to be unconventional. Kester’s very much influenced by his mother—and contrary to twentieth-century folklore this need not necessarily be a disaster; it all depends on the mother, of course, and even from this distance Ginevra comes across as well integrated, someone capable of living her own life and not being too emotionally wrapped up in her son. No, Kester’s problem wasn’t his mother. It was his uncle John.

  “The more Kester, encouraged by his mother, wriggled away from John’s straitjacket, the more guilty and the more inadequate he felt. John was a powerful figure. Kester was no doubt made to understand that he should emulate him—and he couldn’t. Now, there’s a problem situation if ever there was one, but it’s all made a hundred times worse because there at Penhale Manor, being—apparently—the model son whom John adores, is this paragon, Cousin Harry.

  “All right, Kester looks as if he’s escaped from his fix but in fact, as we can see, that’s an illusion, and he’s locked up inwardly if not outwardly in this fatal straitjacket. Harry, on the other hand, appears to be wearing his straitjacket as if it were tailor-made for him but the truth is it’s pinching at every seam. Harry’s not allowed to be his real self—a scientist, a musician, a gifted unusual boy. He’s packed off to boarding school to do the done thing and subconsciously he resents it. Now, that would be bad enough but the situation is made a hundred times worse—again—because there at Oxmoon, living the life Harry longs to lead and doing as he pleases in apparently unclouded bliss, is this fairy-tale prince, Cousin Kester.

  “So by adolescence they’re already locked in this bitter sibling rivalry for John’s approbation and the jealousy’s doubling with each twist of the screw. Oxmoon’s the symbol of their relationship by this time—for Harry it represents the life he longs to lead but that is always denied him, and for Kester it represents his vital edge over his cousin and the ultimate justification of his failure to cut a conventional figure; he may not be a perfect Godwin but he’s going to be the best master Oxmoon’s ever had.

  “And then the malign coincidences start to happen.

  “They marry at about the same time and they marry radically different women. This should have helped but I suspect they found it disturbing. I’m not suggesting that they wanted each other’s wives, but I know Harry admired Anna’s intellect and—forgive me—perhaps she underlined that your mother was a little unsatisfactory to him in some respects. Then perhaps Kester admired your mother’s sexiness which would have underlined to him that his own wife, though clever and charming, wasn’t attractive in that way. In other words I think these marriages subtly exacerbated the jealousy which already existed, and this in its turn perhaps showed up the weak spots in both marriages and led to discontent.

  “We don’t actually know much about Kester’s marriage. Kester’s gilded it with a glowing romantic light but we never get to hear Anna’s side of the story, do we? I’m quite prepared to believe it was a happy marriage, but I just wonder if it was as unflawed as Kester would have us all believe it was. In any marriage there are areas of stress and here, for instance, I can see at least two potential problems: one, it was childless, though they longed for children, and two, Kester was a writer and writers are notoriously difficult to live with. However as far as Harry was concerned Kester had the perfect marriage with this intelligent delightful wife in childless peace, and as far as Kester was concerned Harry was married to this sexy girl who was as good as a fertility goddess and produced four sons in four years. More jealousy, more discontent, more fatal twists of the screw.

  “I don’t need to elaborate on the war, do I? Kester the pacifist, Harry the war hero, each of them envying the other and feeling inadequate. Harry was quite unsuited to the S.A.S., of course, but as Kester was making a success on the home front Harry felt compelled to go out and do the done thing as glamorously as possible. What a disaster—but not quite such a disaster as the second malign coincidence which occurred when their wives died within months of each other.

  “Kester gives the classic performance of the bereaved widower complete with nervous breakdown and Harry pretends to be contemptuous but he’s not. He’d like to have a nervous breakdown too—he’s riddled with guilt about your mother—but of course it’s not the done thing so he can’t. More repressed emotion. It never occurs to him that Kester might also be feeling guilty—not only about Anna but about his breakdown. I’m sure he envied Harry’s stiff upper lip and apparently effortless adjustment to the single life—although the truth is that Harry’s made a most unsatisfactory adjustment; he’s just seducing every woman in sight in an attempt to stave off a breakdown.

  “However Kester can’t see that. Perhaps he’s thinking that he too would like some kind of sex life, but Anna’s the only woman he’s ever had and maybe he secretly lacks confidence in himself. After all, he must have thought, how could he ever match that glittering Casanova, Cousin Harry? Safer not to compete at all.

  “Nevertheless Kester longs for affection so it’s quite natural for him to turn to children and particularly to little Gwyneth Llewellyn who even at an early age promises to be a miraculous fusion of Bella and Anna—clever, charming and sexy. An attraction to a child is a sign of sexual insecurity; a child is less of a threat than an adult. However Kester’s not a willing pedophile; he’s quite prepared to wait till Gwyneth’s grown up before he makes any sexual move but at the same time he’s intelligent enough to know that this could be a dangerous relationship for him, so although he invites her to Oxmoon he always has her chaperoned by other children.

  “So the children’s tea parties have their dark underside, but Harry never sees that. All he sees is that Kester’s captured you, and now Harry’s the one who’s feeling inadequate again, seeing himself as a complete failure while Kester exhibits this undeniable talent for children … and so it goes on.

  “Then finally—into this deeply disturbed and thoroughly unstable relationship between these two deeply disturbed and thoroughly unstable men—comes the catalyst, Thomas, which sets them on the road to tragedy.

  “Now, to me, the outsider, the figure of Thomas is at this point almost as intriguing as the figure of John. For what have we here? We have a third man who regards John as a father figure. And if you look beyond Thomas’s bombastic manners you finally see the man who fits the mold John’s held up to those boys as ideal. Thomas conforms. He’s very, very conventional. He works successfully on the land, just like his father before him, he’s made a good marriage, he has a son to whom he’s devoted, he did well in the war and thoroughly enjoye
d being a soldier. He may be and probably is a far more mixed-up person than he seems, but the point is that he’s projecting an approved image and although his hard drinking would indicate this isn’t entirely easy for him, Harry and Kester aren’t aware of any conflicts that would help them identify with him. Harry and Kester look at Thomas and they can’t stand what they see—he’s intolerable to them. Yet a lot of people seem to have been rather fond of old Thomas. That nice woman your Aunt Eleanor, for instance, still speaks warmly of him even now after all these years.

  “But for Harry and Kester, who have both in their minds failed John, Thomas is anathema. Most of the time Harry’s in a position to conceal this because he too is outwardly conforming to the right image, but no such pretense is available to Kester. Kester loathes him—and what he loathes, of course, isn’t Thomas himself but what Thomas represents. Thomas’s success in wearing the Godwin straitjacket underlines Kester’s failure. Kester may appear to revel triumphantly in his unconventional life, but in his mind he always feels guilty that he’s never managed to conform as his powerful—and probably much-loved—father figure wanted and expected him to do.

  “In other words Thomas stimulated Kester’s neurotic conflict just as Harry did, but because Thomas was a much more abrasive personality it was he and not Harry who finally lit the fuse to the keg of dynamite. If Anna had survived I think she could have put out the fire before the explosion; she would have had the intelligence to spot any abnormality before it got out of control and persuade Kester to seek help. But Anna was dead and so Kester was alone in this unbalanced state which inexorably deteriorated to the danger point.

  “Kester believed he was avenging Anna when he went after Thomas, but I’m certain there was much more going on in his mind than that. I’m sure Thomas was indeed monstrously rude to Anna in 1939 and I’m sure Kester did want to avenge her, but I think in the end this was just the excuse he used to justify his behavior to himself. In my opinion what Kester really wanted to do was to kill this living reminder of his guilt and his inadequacy. In the disturbed mental state that followed his bereavement he found he could no longer live with this walking symbol of his failure to achieve what he believed to be a successful manhood.