The Wheel of Fortune

by Susan Howatch

  He finally stopped speaking. Edmund, Thomas and I all turned automatically to face the wheelchair.

  “Thank you so much, Papa,” said Robert with a courtesy that not even my father could have bettered. “I’m sure we’re all most grateful to you for explaining the position and advising us of your plans before you consult Mrs. Straker. I needn’t remind you, of course, how devoted we all are to you and how deeply concerned we are for your welfare at this most crucial and difficult time. May I venture to hope that bearing our concern in mind, you’ll permit me to make one or two observations which I cannot help but feel are pertinent to the situation?”

  After a moment my father said, “Very well.”

  “I think we’re all a little troubled,” said Robert, “by the effect of any immediate visit of yours to Mrs. Straker. While we perfectly understand that you should wish to see her, we can’t help but wonder what people will think when they find out, as they inevitably will, that you visited your mistress on the day of your wife’s funeral. Would it not be possible for you to postpone the visit for a day or two?”

  My father considered this carefully and said, “No.”

  “My God!”

  “John, you must leave this to me. Now, Papa: is it possible for you to explain to us why you have to see Mrs. Straker tonight?”

  My father brooded on this but finally said, “I’m afraid I’ll go mad if I have to spend another night utterly alone. If I see Milly tonight then perhaps she can move to Oxmoon tomorrow.”

  “Jesus bleeding Christ!” said Edmund, and sank down on the nearest chair.

  “He’s out of his mind,” I said rapidly to Robert. “This is it—he’s lost his mind.”

  “Just a minute.” Robert was still calm. “Papa, don’t listen to them, just listen to me. I understand every word you’ve said but now you must try and understand me because I’m going to tell you a very simple but very vital truth: you cannot bring your mistress into this house, in no matter what capacity, within a week of your wife’s death. That wouldn’t be sticking to the rules, you see, and terrible things happen, as you well know, to people who fail to stick to the rules.”

  “I’ve drawn up some new rules,” said my father. “I’ve spent all afternoon drawing them up. I won’t marry her. Nor will she be just a nominal housekeeper. She’ll occupy a genuine position in the household, with her own room in the servants’ wing, and she’ll call me Mr. Godwin and I’ll call her Mrs. Straker whenever we’re not alone together.”

  “But my dear Papa—”

  My father suddenly shouted with great violence, “Margaret would have understood!”

  That silenced even Robert.

  I had to speak. It was beyond all my powers of endurance to keep quiet a second longer. “How dare you say such a thing!” I cried in fury. “How can you conceivably think she would forgive such an insult to her memory! What you propose to do is absolutely unforgivable!”

  “I agree,” said Edmund, scarlet with emotion as he struggled to his feet. Until that moment I would have judged him incapable of opposing my father, and his blast of rage stunned us all. “I don’t give a damn whom you sleep with, Papa, I don’t believe in God or religion anymore and I can’t stand people who preach about morality, but John’s right for once, this is vile, this is the worst possible insult to my mother—on the very day of her funeral …” His voice broke. He turned away.

  “You bloody fools, both of you!” said Robert angrily. “It’s no good being emotional here—that’s the worst course you can possibly take!”

  “Robert,” said my father, “just explain to them that I can’t be alone. If I’m alone I’ll have to drink to stop myself remembering the past, and if I drink I’ll end up like my father—yes, tell them how frightened I am, Robert, always so frightened that I’ll turn into a drunkard and start seducing boys as my father did—”

  “Oh, my God—”

  “Christ Almighty—”

  “Get that child out of here—”

  “Thomas, leave us at once—”

  “Quiet!” shouted Robert. “Good God, there’s no need for two grown men to throw a fit of hysterics just because they’ve found out their grandfather’s hobby was seducing boys! Pull yourselves together! Now Papa, let’s just try to be rational for a moment. Your father may well have been a drunken pederast who made a mess of his life, but he’s been dead for well over forty years and in the meantime you’ve proved beyond dispute that you’re a very successful man who’s sustained a very successful marriage and shown himself to be a very successful father to six children. You never touch alcohol except on social occasions, when you spend the entire evening imbibing half a bottle of champagne, and bearing all that in mind, I can only say that if you see any similarity whatsoever between yourself and your father I’d very much like to hear about it.”

  “I don’t want to talk about him,” whispered my father. “I can’t think of the past, I daren’t, and that’s why I’ve got to have Milly here as soon as possible.”

  “But that’s irrational, can’t you see?” cried Robert in despair. “It’s quite irrational!”

  “Of course it’s irrational,” I said violently. “He’s mad.” I swung round on my father. “Sir, if you bring that woman into this house either now or at any other time, neither I nor my family will ever cross your threshold again. And if you’re depraved enough to sleep with your mistress on the night following your wife’s funeral, all I can say is that I’ll never forgive you. I feel thoroughly revolted by your behavior and I condemn it from the very bottom of my heart.”

  “So do I,” said Edmund.

  I turned to him. “You’ll come and stay with me at the Manor, of course.”

  “Thank you. Yes, I couldn’t possibly condone such an insult to Mama’s memory by staying here.”

  “Thomas,” I said, “you must live with me too. Papa’s not fit to look after you anymore.”

  Thomas stared at me. His face had a white pinched expression. He looked very young and very frightened.

  “There, there, Thomas,” said my father, putting his arm around him again. “It’s all right. They can’t take you away from me. Don’t let them upset you.”

  “I find it hard to believe, sir,” said Robert, “that you—a man who’s always taken such care in the upbringing of his sons—can be blind to the effect of your conduct on Thomas.”

  “Don’t talk such bloody rubbish,” said my father. “What do you know about bringing up children? A fine mess you made of those stepsons of yours!”

  “And a fine mess you’ll make of Thomas!” I shouted.

  “Be quiet!” my father shouted back. “Thomas has just lost his mother, but he’s not going to lose his father too! Children need love, not damned preaching! Now get out, the whole bloody lot of you, and leave me and Thomas alone!”

  “That’s the first sensible suggestion you’ve made for some time,” said Robert, “and I’m sure we’ll all be delighted to oblige you, but before we go I’d just like to say this: I shan’t cut myself off from you because frankly I don’t think you’re fit to struggle on with only the support of Thomas and Mrs. Straker, but you should understand that I find your conduct very hard to condone and I certainly deplore the way you’ve deepened our bereavement by making a painful situation well-nigh intolerable. John—Edmund—”

  We lifted the wheelchair from the floor of the summerhouse and carried it down the step to the lawn. Edmund began to push the chair away, but I found I had to make one last attempt to talk to Thomas.

  “If you change your mind,” I said to him, “don’t forget you can always have a bed at the Manor.”

  “Go away!” yelled Thomas, his face streaked with tears. “I’m staying with my father!”

  Glendower barked as if to underline the statement, and as my father exclaimed, “Damn you, leave the boy alone!” something snapped inside me.

  “Your father’s a filthy disgusting old man!” I shouted to Thomas. “And the sooner you realize that
the better!”

  My rage carried me all the way across the lawn in my brothers’ wake, but by the time I reached the house I was gripped by my next all-consuming problem: I was wondering how on earth I was going to break the news to Blanche.

  4

  I

  I TOLD BLANCHE AS soon as I returned to Penhale Manor. We were in the long drawing room which with the dining room next door had once formed the old medieval hall; it faced south over what had once been a moat and was now a rose garden. All the mullioned windows were open, and as I stood with Blanche beside her grand piano I could feel the warmth of the late-afternoon sun and hear the buzzing of the bees in the shrubs that clustered against the ancient stone walls of the house. Blanche had been arranging some white roses in one of the French crystal vases that had been given to us as a wedding present. No matter what time of year it was the drawing room never seemed to be without flowers.

  “I hardly know how to tell you this,” I said. “If there was any way of keeping it from you I would, but unfortunately the scandal will soon be notorious.”

  “Scandal?” said Blanche, pausing with a white rose in her hands. Her dark eyes, which slanted above her high cheekbones, were disturbed but trustful as she waited for me to continue. Naturally she knew that any incipient scandal could not possibly relate to me.

  Rigid with embarrassment I told her that my father was planning to keep Mrs. Straker at Oxmoon. I could not tell her he proposed to sleep with his mistress on the night of his wife’s funeral. I was too ashamed, too angry. As it was I had a hard time keeping my voice unemotional.

  “… and so we shan’t be calling at Oxmoon once that woman’s there. I refuse to condone such immorality.”

  “Of course,” said Blanche. She fell silent, her face grave as she considered the situation. She was still holding the white rose. “How very sad it is,” she said at last, and added more to herself than to me: “Your poor father.”

  I was shocked. “I really think sympathy’s uncalled for, Blanche!”

  “But obviously he’s unhinged by your mother’s death.”

  “That’s no excuse! He has an absolute moral duty to his family not to degrade himself in this fashion!”

  “Oh, I agree the immorality’s dreadful,” said Blanche rapidly as if she feared she had given me offense. “You mustn’t think I’m arguing with you, darling. But my dear Mama used to say that it was easy to condemn sin but hard to be compassionate—to be Christian. I’d like to think I’d always try to be compassionate, even if the fault was very hard to understand.”

  “Well, no understanding’s possible in this case,” I said, “and I’ve used up all my compassion.” But I kissed her to show how much I admired her goodness, and dropping her white rose on the top of the piano, she put her arms around me comfortingly.

  “You look so tired, John—I do wish you’d rest.”

  “No, I’m too upset. I’m going for a walk.”

  “If there’s anything I can do—”

  “No, there’s nothing,” I said. “Nothing.” And before I could break down and distress her with every detail of the sordid scene in the summerhouse I left her, a slender oddly forlorn figure beside her bowl of perfect roses.

  II

  I walked down the drive to the gates. The Manor stood on the edge of Penhale village, less than a quarter of a mile from the church but more than a mile from Oxmoon, which lay farther south along the road to Rhossili.

  I headed into the village. It was a typical settlement of the Gower Englishry, complete with cottages grouped in traditional English fashion around a green, but it had a tousled casual air which an English visitor would have found alien. There was the usual village shop, which also served as the post office, and beyond the green lay the forge which still refused to cater for the motorcar. The church had been built on the orders of the two medieval warlords, Gilbert de Bracy and Humphrey de Mohun, and was resolutely Norman in design; the square tower was not a common feature among the churches of Gower. In contrast the interior was a monument to the excruciating taste of the Victorian de Bracys who had conducted renovations while my grandfather Robert Godwin the Drunkard had been too preoccupied with his troubles to care what was going on. The church had caused endless rows between the two families in previous centuries, for although the de Bracys had treated it as an extension of Penhale Manor, the living of the parish had been in Godwin hands. The poor vicars must have had a hard time surviving in the cross fire.

  I hesitated in the shadow of the lych-gate. Then I walked around the tower, sat down on an iron bench and stared at the dying flowers on my mother’s grave.

  I wanted to forget my father by grieving for my mother, but again conventional grief eluded me, and rising to my feet in an agony of restlessness I began to walk in a clockwise direction around the Godwin tombstones. Then I turned and completed a circle anticlockwise. After that I realized I was beside myself not with grief but with a chaotic mess of emotion which I could not begin to subjugate, so I sat down again, put my head in my hands and gave way to uncontrolled despair; my father had failed to draw the line and beyond that line, as I knew so well, lay misery, madness and death.

  I saw him following inexorably in my grandmother’s footsteps, and at once I found myself wondering if some hereditary weakness could exist which might condemn a man to moral degradation against his will and his better judgment. That was a terrifying thought. I recalled my own sexuality and shuddered. At least I had it in tight control. But perhaps my father too had had his sexuality in control at the age of twenty-nine.

  I rubbed my hand across my eyes as if I could wipe out my vision of intolerable possibilities, and suddenly I missed my mother. I wanted to hear her say, “Here I have my standards—and here I draw the line.” But my mother’s voice had been silenced, and although I was repeating her words the magic had gone from the incantation which warded off all evil, and now no one was listening to them.

  I moved to the grave, stooped over the wreath of white roses which Blanche had made and pulled out the card which I myself had written. In loving and devoted memory, I read, John, Blanche, Marian and Harry. I spoke the words “loving and devoted” aloud, and at last I recognized an emotion that resembled conventional grief. Slipping the card into my breast pocket, I immediately felt better. I was now thinking not of whether my mother had loved me but of how much I had loved her for continually keeping hell at bay. I had been loving and devoted, just as the card had said. That was real, that was true. Then I remembered at last how my mother had embraced me on the night of her death and said, “Dear John, how good and kind you really are,” and I knew those words had been spoken from the heart. “To think that you should be the one who loves me enough to say that,” she had said, overcome with remorse for her past omissions when I had praised her, and suddenly I felt that whatever had been wrong had been put right. I too had spoken from the heart, and after years of dutiful formality we had at the end achieved an honest conversation during which love had undoubtedly been present.

  I sank down on the bench again, shed a tear, stole a furtive glance around the churchyard to make sure I was unobserved and then cried for thirty shameful seconds. That cured me. I felt I had arranged my memory of my mother into an acceptable pattern which could be fitted into the script of my life; I felt I could now be, without difficulty, the devoted son of a loving mother.

  That night I was so exhausted that I thought I would sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, but I was wrong. Obsessed by the thought of my father sleeping with his mistress on the night of his wife’s funeral, I tossed and turned in misery until dawn.

  III

  “I saw Mrs. Morgan today,” said Blanche a week later.

  “Oh, yes?” I said. I had just had a row with Edmund and was feeling distracted. “Which Mrs. Morgan?” Morgan is a very commonly encountered name in Wales.

  “Mrs. Meredith’s sister. I asked her if Rhiannon would like to play here again, but unfortunately they’re all retu
rning to Cardiff. It seems Mr. Morgan has returned from the sea and secured new accommodation for them.”

  “Oh yes?” I said again. “Well, I daresay that’s for the best—we don’t really want Marian becoming too friendly with a working-class child, do we. Darling, listen, I’ve just had the most appalling row with Edmund …”

  In the week that had elapsed since my mother’s funeral Mrs. Straker had been installed as housekeeper directly after the departure from Oxmoon of Aunt Ethel and her tribe. The entire parish of Penhale was now throbbing with a prurient delight, lightly masked as scandalized horror, and I was aware of the villagers observing me compassionately as if I were suffering from some monstrous affliction. From Llangennith and Llanmadoc in the north to Porteynon and Penrice in the south, from Rhossili in the west to Swansea in the east, the gossip was reverberating through Gower, and I was just telling myself that matters could hardly be worse when Edmund, who had been staying at Penhale Manor, announced his intention to return to Oxmoon to condone my father’s conduct.